Senate Report Card: Dick Lugar R-IN

Senator Dick Lugar is the senior Republican United States Senator from the state of Indiana. Senator Lugar assumed office in 1977. In 2006 he ran without a Democratic Party challenger and earned over 87% of the vote, and won over three fourths of the vote in every county, all of this in a year that Republicans lost control of both the House and Senate in massive losses. Lugar has become the first Indiana senator to be re-elected for a fifth term.

Senator Lugar serves on the Agriculture Committee of which he is the ranking member. He also serves on the Foreign Relations Committee.

The senator is generally pro life. He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. He voted for English as the Common Language. He voted against a Congressional Pay Raise in 2005. He voted for the Hate Crimes Amendment. He voted for No Child Left Behind.

Lugar has been responsible for gaining Senate ratification of treaties to reduce the world's use, production and stockpiling of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In 1991, he initiated a treaty with the objective of eliminating latent weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. To date, the program has deactivated more than 5,900 nuclear warheads.

Senator Lugar has built bipartisan support for federal farm program reforms that modernized the farming industry. He's worked to initiate a biofuels research program to help decrease U.S. dependency on foreign oil. He's reformed the food stamp program and preserved the federal school lunch program.

Senator Dick Lugar has created what has been termed the "Lugar Doctrine" which is shown on his website to be the following: the United States will use all of its military, diplomatic and economic power - without question - to ensure that life threatening weapons of mass destruction everywhere are accounted, contained and hopefully destroyed. Additionally, the Lugar Doctrine asserts that the U.S. should encourage democratic institutions and decrease dependence on foreign energy sources.

Senator Lugar voted for military authorization in Iraq in 2002. He has voted against restrictions on troop deployments and against attachments of timetables to appropriations for the war. He has since broken with the White House over Iraq, pointing out that time is quickly coming for a troop withdraw from Iraq, and that the Bush Administration is quickly approaching the need for a new direction in Iraq, he has lost faith in the surge policy.

Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana is up for reelection in 2012.