Chris Dodd

Well, the clock is ticking until the Iowa caucus, so I'd better cover some more candidates.

Our featured Presidential candidate for today is Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat.

Where did I first hear of Senator Dodd? I don't know. He's been around for a while, so maybe I heard of him from the news. I vaguely recall that Rush Limbaugh mentioned him in The Way Things Ought to Be, but I could be wrong on this. Rush said that Teddy Kennedy and someone else were behaving inappropriately on an airplane, but I don't remember if that was Dodd or not. Dodd also plays a prominent role in an excellent book by Phyllis Schlafly, entitled Who Will Rock the Cradle?

Who Will Rock the Cradle? (1989) is about child care policy. It contains presentations by credentialed experts, including psychologists, physicians, public servants, and Mrs. Schlafly herself, who argue that federal funded day care is a bad idea. Well, the villain in the book is Senator Christopher Dodd, who was an author of the Dodd-Kildee ABC bill. Essentially, the bill would have spent billions on a child care entitlement for the poor and the middle class. The recipients could only use day care facilities that were approved by the federal government, which would have excluded religious day care or the extended family. The bill also ignored mothers who chose to bear the economic consequences of staying home with their children. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation effectively argued that many low income people did not use day care, since most of them had extended family who could help out. Instead of the Dodd ABC bill, the book advocated giving parents tax credits so that they could choose their own child care for their children.

Since Reagan was President at the time, the Dodd ABC bill didn't get too far. Reagan probably would've opposed it anyway, but what tipped the issue for him was when the bill's liberal defenders started saying that grandmothers should apply for federal licenses to be recognized as day care providers. He thought that carried big government to the extreme (and rightly so)!

To his credit, Dodd seems to be supportive of the per child tax credit, since he wants to expand the eligibility for it. Most of his other stances on taxes are, well, atrocious (to say the least). For example, he voted "no" on repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax, which hits many in the middle class especially hard. Sheesh, even Hillary is critical of the Alternative Minimum Tax (even though, strangely enough, she also voted against its repeal).

As I look at Chris Dodd on the Issues, I see that the web site's label of him as a "left liberal" is quite deserved. He obviously believes that the government can run people's lives better than they can. Just look at some of his votes! He voted against allowing Roth IRAs for retirees (May 1998), personal retirement accounts (Apr 1998), and deductions of Social Security payments on income taxes (May 1996). He also voted to block Medical Savings Accounts, and he is a strong opponent of school choice. There seems to be one area in which he supported less government and more economic freedom, and that related to Enron. Dodd received more money from Enron's "independent auditor" than any other Democrat, and he led the fight to limit auditors' liability. See the wikipedia article for documentation.

On some things, Dodd looks like a Dennis Kucinich. He opposed requiring welfare recipients to have drug tests, and he is against the death penalty, which even Hillary supports. But, for reasons that I can't figure out, he doesn't always get a perfect score from liberal groups. The ACLU only gave him a 60% rating, and the NEA gave him 82%. I read all these liberal positions, and then I see low scores. What is Chris Dodd on the Issues hiding from us?

In addition, Dodd's position on illegal immigration is rather confusing. He is against granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, but he wants them to receive Social Security and welfare. Go figure!

Interestingly, he also overlaps with Ann Coulter on one issue: Pakistan. He said that the President of Pakistan is the only thing standing in the way of Islamic fundamentalism in that country, which is essentially what Ann Coulter argues in her November 14 column. Unlike Coulter, however, Dodd actually opposed Musharraf's emergency rule. And, as far as his overall stance on the War on Terror is concerned, Dodd is your typical Democrat: he's against the Iraq war, but he's still voted to fund it.

So Dodd is too liberal for my taste, though he has given me interesting thoughts on the War on Drugs and whether it actually helps to lock people up for drug offenses. I don't see him winning any primaries, which is why I wanted to write about him before he drops out. Have a nice day!