(KCPW News) Senator Orrin Hatch was in Utah today, speaking to the legislature about what he’s doing in Washington and defending his 36-year record in the Senate as he faces Republican challengers this election year. He said among his biggest concerns is Hill Air Force Base and how to keep it from becoming a target for military reductions in the coming years.
“The Air Force gave me the highest civilian award that they can give, the Stuart Symington Award, just a couple of years ago,” he said. “All I can say is I believe in what we’re doing here. We’re not going to let them politically defeat us. If they can show us where we can do it better, we’re going to do it better. But by gosh, Hill is a critical component in this country.
Hatch also acknowledged that not enough is being done in Washington to deal with illegal immigration. He told lawmakers all of the country’s problems with illegal immigration would be fixed if the U.S. could seal its borders, and believes more needs to be done on that front.
“If the federal government is not going to do its job in protecting our states from murders and influx of drugs and other criminal activity, then by gosh, why should the states not be permitted to do the necessaries to protect the individual people within the states? I believe that’s a winning issue constitutionally,” he said.
Hatch concluded his speech in the House of Representatives by assuring lawmakers that he was going to win his upcoming re-election against opponent Dan Liljenquist, a former state senator, and current state Representative Chris Herrod.
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2 Comments
I’m very interested to find out the results of the unofficial poll on the senate race that the legislature is going to hold. I’ve heard that Hatch isn’t very popular there.
Why should he be popular there? Once a year he goes up there and makes a stump speech. He doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t listen, and the rest of the time he simply ignores the Utah legislature. He announces a “plan” for reforming the state pension systems, apparently not realizing that Utah already did that, and is a model for the nation. All he had to do is ask the governor or any state legislator what they thought about pension reform, and he would have found that out, since he apparently doesn’t read the papers.
That is the exact opposite of how the Senate was originally constructed.
Of course it was his opponent, Dan Liljenquist, who designed Utah’s pension reforms, and pushed them through the legislature by unanimous votes.
That should tell us all we need to know. Liljenquist has a track record of getting things done and them moving on. Orrin has a track record of hanging around long past his most productive years.
It’s Time!
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