Recently, 3rd District Congressman Dan Lungren sent a mailer to his constituents in which he rails against federal stimulus funding and, unethically, promotes his re-election campaign against challenger Ami Bera in the upcoming November election, a contest on which we reported here last January: Lungren, the career politician who defends the Washington D.C. status quo grid-lock, versus Dr. Bera, a newcomer to politics whose fresh, long-term views represent hoped-for solutions to the 3rd District’s most pressing problems.

Why is this recent incident important? Aside from being about one of the major local and regional races on the November ballot, what Lungren is doing with his mailer, “prepared, produced and mailed at taxpayers’ expense,” is unethical, violating House rules on “franking” or communicating with constituents. The franking privilege may only be used for matters of public concern or public service, not to send mail regarding political campaigns (39 U.S.C. 3210(3)(a). Lungren should reimburse taxpayers for this mailer.

Besides being unethical, Lungren’s flier is grossly misleading. For example, he claims “to support legislation that helps produce a sustainable economic recovery…” (yet he voted against both stimulus packages) and “to vote with your concerns and the plight of the unemployed in mind.” Contradicting this latter comment, Lungren has repeatedly voted against extending unemployment benefits.

Lungren also claims in his mailer that Congressional Budget Office estimates say “…our debt held by the public will grow an additional $11 trillion over the next decade, to more than $20 trillion.” Actually, the CBO estimates the decade’s debt growth to be $4 trillion, to nearly $12 trillion. Finally, Lungren rejects Congress “…taxing its way out of the current fiscal crisis….” (who’s proposing that?) and he advocates “discipline with respect to spending,” a short-term position the CBO shows would have led to lower GDP and higher unemployment, and a worse recession than we’re now experiencing.

Incumbents like Lungren already have a built-in advantage with their name-recognition, and it’s adding insult to injury for them to use taxpayers’ dollars to promote their re-election campaigns, particularly if they mislead voters and pitch their campaign platform with those dollars.

But all this is no big surprise since Lungren is a master of political misconduct. In March 2010, for example, he put out a mailer which purported to be an "Annual Report on U.S. Government Spending," but was in fact his flawed argument against government stimulus funding and debt creation – the short-term policy which has saved and created jobs. (Economists like Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff who seriously study the debt support stimulus funding in the short-term followed by debt reduction in the long-term so as to maintain economic growth once recovery is in place.) Like the recent mailer, Lungren’s propagandist March mailer was also funded by taxpayers who were neither “informed” by his faulty data nor in agreement with his arguments.

Lungren’s cavalier attitude toward his constituents and taxpayers is well documented. In May, we reported here on his reaction to taking substantial contributions from “big oil” while voting against legislation designed to protect gas consumers, lower energy prices and reduce our dependence on foreign oil: with a smirk, he said: “I don’t consider it a contradiction…if I could get more [big oil money], I’d take more.”

Also well documented is Lungren’s use of a loophole in the new 2007 law – designed to prevent lobbyists from paying legislators’ travel – by which he took a lavish Hawaii vacation funded by the aviation industry, during which he appears to have worked minimally and played mostly. When questioned about exploiting the loophole, Lungren displayed his usual hubris, questioning why it was “such a big deal,” organizations meet at nice places (which he “likes”), and spend lots of time around the swimming pool (which also befits his style as a “California kid”).

Against the dismal backdrop of so few solutions to our pressing problems being legislated by Congress these days, Lungren’s behavior and attitude represent a political style that is out of touch and which the taxpayers of the 3rd California Congressional District simply can no longer afford. Dr. Bera, by contrast, brings a campaign platform of proposals that are a breath of fresh air and are reasonably designed to solve a number of the 3rd District’s most pressing problems – jobs, economic development, health reform, sustainable energy, education, security and the like.