In their first and only debate, the Republican and Democrat running for Indiana’s open U.S. Senate seat sought to differentiate their records while the Libertarian tried to cut through as an alternative.
Republican U.S. Rep. Todd Young hit Democrat Evan Bayh repeatedly on his vote for Obamacare, the more colloquial term for the Affordable Care Act, and his decision to work in Washington, D.C., for a lobbying firm after leaving the U.S. Senate.
“Perhaps you need to spend a little more time in Indiana, as I have, to see the real impact of Obamacare,” Young said. “Clearly Evan Bayh has become a creature of Washington. He’s left us. We need more Indiana in Washington, less Washington in Indiana.”
Young, who represents Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, including Monroe County, also criticized at least three times what he calls the “Obama-Clinton lead from behind foreign policy” and said Hoosiers could expect to see a similar Clinton-Bayh policy.
Bayh, on the other hand, hit Young for his vote to shut down the government and his desire to repeal Obamacare, taking away health care coverage from 350,000 Hoosiers and sending people back to the days when insurance companies could deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition, among other reasons.
“We don’t need to go back to those days, and I’ll make sure that we won’t,” Bayh said. But he acknowledged Obamacare isn’t perfect: “What we need to do is fix the parts of the law that need to be fixed and keep those that are working well.”