Senate candidate Hovde denies accusations he doesn’t care about the poor

U.S. Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde says he expects the four way primary race he’s in to get nastier over the eight weeks. Speaking at a Wispolitics luncheon in Madison Thursday, (6/21) Hovde responded to allegations that he’s rich guy who doesn’t care about poor people.

A recent column in the Huffington Post quoted Hovde asking reporters to stop writing ‘sob stories’ about people who will be affected by proposed cuts in the foodstamp program. Hovde’s reponse is that his banks and finance companies fund numerous charities around the world and in the U.S. to help the economically disadvantaged. He defended his plan to eliminate food stamp and Medicaid fraud, which he says costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year: “You have to make sure it’s operating, because if you break it then the people who really need it are devastated. That’s my whole point: if we don’t reform Social Security, if we don’t deal with some of these things, then the people who need it are lost.”

Hovde also says if elected he’ll promote austerity in government spending, especially when it comes to health care. He says he hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down the federal health care reform act commonly known by detractors as Obamacare: “As far as I’m concerned, any which way we can move away from what he’s enacted the better.”

He says he supports health care reform that will save taxpayer dollars while still helping those who can’t afford insurance, “We do need to deal with the people that are struggling. I like what Paul Ryan has talked about premium support plans, where you are helping them buy insurance and making them smart consumers.”

Hovde says he expects to be attacked in the coming months by the two candidates currently leading in the polls: former Gov. Tommy Thompson and former Congressman Mark Neumann.