In the race for the 1st Congressional District seat, the contrast between incumbent U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree and challenger Dean Scontras could hardly be starker.

Whatever the voters were expecting, Chellie Pingree has turned out to be one of the most liberal members of Congress. Pingree shares with Barack Obama the conviction that government can solve every problem, meet every need and resolve every grievance if it can spend enough and regulate enough. She has been a zealous supporter of the Obama agenda, which represents the greatest lurch to the left in American politics since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Pingree was an enthusiastic supporter of “ObamaCare” and of the $800 billion of stimulus spending that has left the unemployment rate above 9 percent. When President Obama begins to argue that tax increases are necessary to pay for the flood of spending that has had little benefit for the private economy, Pingree will agree and vote for them in a New York second.

Dean Scontras, on the other hand, is a level-headed, experienced businessman who understands that countries can’t borrow and spend their way to prosperity, that taxpayers can’t fund everything on Pingree’s wish list, and that spending and borrowing on the Pingree-Obama scale will impoverish current and future generations.

Voters appear ready to get Maine’s house in order by sending Paul LePage to Augusta. In the same spirit we should retire Chellie Pingree and send Dean Scontras to Washington.

Martin Jones
Freeport


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