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Lunsford claim: “… McConnell opposes commonsense solutions that offer immediate relief to working Kentucky families struggling to make ends meet due to the current gas crisis.”

Fact: Senator McConnell is sponsoring the Gas Price Reduction act, which calls for expanded domestic production, increased conservation, and investment new technology.  It has more than 40 co-sponsors and is attracting positive attention from congressional democrats.

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Lunsford claim: “McConnell opposes a gas tax holiday which will offer an immediate 18 cents a gallon savings”

Fact: Senator McConnell supports a gas tax holiday now and has voted for one in the past. (Vote #80, 4/11/00, Cloture was not invoked 43-56, McConnell voted aye)

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Lunsford claim: “...[McConnell] opposes closing the Enron Loophole, which has allowed rampant speculation by hedge funds to inflate oil prices $40 a barrel…”

Fact:  This claim is blatantly false.   Senator McConnell voted for and was a key member in passing the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act (the ’08 Farm Bill), which closed the Enron Loophole.  (RCV# 434, 12/14/07 H.R. 2419 passed the Senate 79-14, McConnell voted aye, RCV# 130, 5/15/08, Conference report passed the Senate 81-15, McConnell voted aye, RCV #140, 5/22/08, Senate overrode President’s veto, McConnell voted aye).

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Lunsford claim: “…All the while, McConnell supports more tax breaks for Big Oil while taking $650,000 of their campaign cash and using that money to cover up his awful record…”

Fact: Senator McConnell has supported tax breaks for expanded domestic energy production, including oil and gas, clean coal, and billions dollars for conservation.  In fact, he supported a $9 billion tax credit that included incentives for biodiesel, ethanol, wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy and energy efficient homes and commercial buildings.

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Lunsford Claim: “[Senator] McConnell voted against releasing oil from the SPR, which could lower gas prices.”

Fact:  Releasing 10% of the SPR, as the Democrats have proposed, would provide just 3.5 days worth of oil. (The SPR currently holds about 700 million barrels of oil.  The U.S. uses 20 million barrels of oil a day.  Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration.).  While Senator McConnell doesn’t necessarily oppose a release from the SPR, he believes this action is like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. He believes the Congress should pass his Gas Price Reduction Act, which offers a comprehensive solution.

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Lunsford Claim:  “[Senator] McConnell Also Opposed Cracking Down on Price Speculation…”

Fact: Senator McConnell’s Gas Price Reduction Act puts more cops on the beat at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to protect against abuse in the futures markets.  He is addressing the issue head on.  Why is Bruce Lunsford’s view that speculation – from which he is has profited handsomely – is the only cause of outrageously high gas prices?

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Lunsford Claim: “[Senator] McConnell voted against protecting consumers and providing relief at the pump.”

Fact: Senator McConnell voted against the last two increases in the federal gas tax, in 1990 and 1993.  Meanwhile, Bruce Lunsford gave Kentuckians an automatically increasing gas tax that has cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, and supports policies that would further drive up the price of gas.

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After enduring months of negative attacks, Senator McConnell is responding aggressively on the #1 issue facing Kentucky voters.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell today announced that his campaign has launched a new ad focused on Bruce Lunsford’s record on gas prices.

In 1980 as Governor John Y. Brown’s chief legislative liaison , Bruce Lunsford successfully lobbied to change the way Kentucky taxes gasoline, changing it from a flat amount to indexing the tax to the wholesale cost of gasoline.  This means that as the cost of gas increases the tax paid by Kentuckians automatically increases as well.

Why is this an issue now?  Not only is the cost of gas the top issue on voters’ minds, but Bruce Lunsford has made it a top issue in his campaign, citing his work to change the gas tax in Kentucky as one of his signature achievements in his public career, both speaking about it publicly and touting it on his campaign website as reasons Kentuckians should vote for him.

In a video released by his campaign, Lunsford boasts to a Bowling Green audience in May of this year, “We changed the way we tax gas in this state that gave us a budget that could grow.”  And on his campaign website he said he “worked with state legislators to change the gas tax from 9 cents to 9 percent.” Remarkably, he even boasts of calling his father to revel in the achievement.

What has this meant for Kentucky motorists?  The gas tax has increased automatically each year since 2004, and just went up again on July 1st of this year.  With gas prices already too high, Lunsford apparently believes it’s appropriate to burden citizens at the pump even more.

“After months and months of negative attacks, we are today beginning to set the record straight,” said McConnell campaign manager Justin Brasell. 

In addition to constant attacks from Lunsford in his TV ads – even during his primary race – and in his daily campaign rhetoric, Senator McConnell has been the victim of misleading attacks on the airwaves and news pages from Lunsford allies for more than a year.  The Courier-Journal and The Herald-Leader have combined run 139 negative editorial and opinion pieces against Senator McConnell since he became Republican Leader.  The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, Campaign Action Fund, Campaign to Defend America, MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, Campaign Money Watch, and the Sierra Club are all partisan, liberal front groups aligned with Bruce Lunsford that have run TV or radio advertising against Senator McConnell since last summer.

“Senator McConnell has a record of accomplishment of which Kentuckians can be proud, and our campaign will aggressively defend against false and misleading attacks.  This ad will be the first step in letting voters know the truth about Bruce Lunsford’s record,” Brasell said.

Watch the ad and learn more at www.lunsfordgastax.com. 

Senator Mitch McConnell worked with the Senate Appropriations Committee to secure $75 million for the construction of a new Veterans Administration medical center in Louisville. Read more from the Courier-Journal:

A Senate panel today agreed to provide $75 million for the new Veterans Affairs hospital in Louisville — a $30 million increase over what the House would spend.

The increase was requested by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and would be used for design work on the new facility.

Last month a House panel approved $45 million for the hospital at the request of Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District.

In both the Senate and House spending bills — for military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs — the $45 million would be used for land acquisition and site preparation.

McConnell’s $30 million addition will be subject to negotiations between the House and Senate over the final form of the spending bill.

“This is great news for the tens of thousands of veterans living in and around Louisville who rely on the VA for their health-care needs,” McConnell said in a statement after the action by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He added that the new facility “will help ensure that America’s heroes receive the quality health care and other benefits they deserve.”

Senator Mitch McConnell wrote the following op-ed for today’s Wall Street Journal.

Now that an executive-branch ban on offshore oil exploration has been lifted, the time has come for Democrats in Washington to lift their own ban on increased domestic supply. Americans are demanding that Congress do something about record-high gas prices. They recognize that prices will not go down unless supplies go up. And they also know that the only thing now standing in the way of more domestic supply is the Democratic refusal to allow it.

A recent Pew poll provides the evidence of a growing consensus on the issue. As gas prices have spiked by about 30% over the past five months, the percentage of Americans who support more domestic energy exploration and less reliance on Middle East oil has jumped too, to 47% from 35%. Most striking: Among self-described liberals, support for increased domestic exploration has jumped to 45% from 22% in just five months.

Swift and dramatic public opinion shifts like this are rare, and Democrats are starting to take notice. Just last month, most Democrats on Capitol Hill were reiterating their long-held opposition to any new domestic production. Their presidential nominee was saying that less consumption, not more supply, was the only answer to the problem. In the face of growing public frustration, their opposition is melting away. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated as much recently when he said exploration was "not off the table." At least 12 other Senate Democrats have joined him since.

Now it's time for the Democrats to show that their recent conversion on domestic exploration is genuine, and Republicans are ready to help them. Just prior to the July Fourth holiday, a group of Republican senators proposed a balanced piece of energy legislation aimed at attracting the greatest number of supporters on both sides of the aisle. The bill, known as the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, can be summed up in a single phrase: find more, use less.

The Gas Price Reduction Act is composed of just a few ideas. But taken together, the proposals will address the problem head on. They include deep-sea exploration more than 50 miles off the coasts of the states that want it, lifting a ban on development of the promising and plentiful oil shale deposits in western states, and increased incentives for the development of plug-in electric cars and trucks. The bill also includes provisions to strengthen U.S. futures markets and guard against excessive speculation.

The Gas Price Reduction Act is a sensible approach to gas prices that squarely faces something too many in Washington would rather ignore: the law of supply and demand. Conservation is an idea that both parties support and both parties have addressed legislatively. But if prices are going to go down, supply has to go up too. This means Democrats will have to abandon their traditional opposition to domestic exploration by lifting a congressional ban on off-shore exploration.

In a presidential election year, this presents Congress with a particular challenge. Democrats, eyeing the White House for the first time in eight years, have made no secret of their desire to run out the clock on important legislation until after Inauguration Day. Mr. Reid made this clear when he said recently that he intends to put off, until February, 10 of the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government, and which represent the basic duty of Congress. "I don't think we are going to have a lot of bills on the Senate floor this work period," he told reporters last week. "I hope we can get a couple of them done."

But the general public is becoming frustrated and impatient with purported legislative solutions that only nibble around the edges, or which are guaranteed to fail. Congressional Democrats may be willing to wait for the next six months. Americans who dread pulling into the gas station every day want relief as soon as possible from the heavy burden of high gas prices. They have every right to expect their representatives in Washington to do something now.

From PolitickerKY:

After funding requested by U.S. Rep John Yarmuth (D-Louisville) for a new Veteran's Administration hospital was approved in a Senate subcommitee today, Yarmuth praised an unlikely ally on the other side of the aisle - Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Louisville).
 
"This is great news," said Yarmuth in a statement. "I was happy to have secured funding in the House for a new VA hospital in Louisville, and with the Senate now on board, we can confidently say that Louisville's veterans will have a new, state-of-the-art hospital very soon. I thank Senator McConnell for working with me to make sure that the veterans in our community get the care and treatment they deserve."

$75 million in funding for a hospital in Louisville - hometown to both Yarmuth and McConnell - was approved by the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, upon which McConnell sits.
Yarmuth had initially secured $45 million for the project in the House, but the amount passed by the Senate subcommittee was raised to "maximum the VA can obligate in 2009," according to a release from McConnell's Senate office.

“This is great news for the tens of thousands of veterans living in and around Louisville who rely on the VA for their health care needs,” said McConnell in the release. “This funding will not only help with the site selection and land acquisition, but it will also be used to begin the initial design phase of the new VA hospital, which will help ensure that America’s heroes receive the quality health care and other benefits they deserve.”
McConnell's work to increase the funding was also singled out by the ranking Republican on the subcommittee.

"I want to highlight the work of Senator McConnell. He has been tireless in his efforts to secure funding to establish a state-of-the-art VA hospital in Louisville," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.).