Trading on his bipartisanship and collegiality, 52nd Congressional District incumbent Scott Peters, a Democrat, branded his Republican challenger, Carl DeMaio, as “divisive, something Congress doesn\u2019t need right now.”
\nSpeaking a week after DeMaio at the Mission Beach Rotary Club at Pacific Beach\u2019s Catamaran Hotel, Peters said his record shows he\u2019s adopted a “less-partisan, less-divided approach to Congress.”
\nPeters told Rotarians he\u2019s been ranked as one of the most independent Congressional Democrats.
\n“I\u2019m willing to vote with both sides to solve problems,” he said, outlining his political priority list to Rotarians. “I put country first. The district is second. My party is third.”
\nPeters defined political courage as “the ability to come to the middle, sit down at the table and work out a solution. That\u2019s what I\u2019m committed to do.”
\nA former San Diego City Councilman and San Diego Unified Port Commissioner, Peters said he chose to be on the House Armed Services and the Science, Space and Technologies committees because he wanted to be involved in areas to help San Diego spur its economy.
\n“San Diego\u2019s economy is driven by tourism, the military and science and innovation,” Peters said. “One-quarter of our jobs come from the military. We\u2019re the second-leading city in telecommunications with Qualcomm and the third-leading city behind Boston and San Francisco with biotechnology.”
\nToward that end, Peters said he\u2019s been supportive of local efforts to promote alternative energy, including the development of algae as a biofuel and solar energy for use by the military and in building technology.
\nConcerning immigration, Peters said, “The border\u2019s a mess.”
\nDisagreeing with DeMaio, who favors shipping children who are illegally in the U.S. back to their home countries, Peters said, “We\u2019d be sending them back to gang violence, rape and murder \u2014 and that\u2019s just not what we\u2019re about.
\n“We can\u2019t be against human trafficking on the one hand and then just say kick the kids out on the other,” he said.
\nDiscussing health-care reform, Peters said that\u2019s one of the areas where he\u2019s deviated from the mainstream-Democrat line in Congress.
\n“I think (Obamacare) needs a little help,” Peters said, adding quickly, “It won\u2019t be repealed. We can\u2019t go back. A lot more [reform] work needs to be done. I\u2019m ready to talk about a real solution.”
\nPeters said he\u2019s also out front in the effort to take some of the financial burden off students paying for school.
\n“There\u2019s more student debt than credit-card debt now,” he said, noting he\u2019s authored a Congressional bill that would “refinance all student debt to 4 percent. We shouldn\u2019t be gouging kids by requiring them to pay as much as 8 to 10 percent.”
\nPeters said student debt has become a huge drag on the economy, forcing students to delay important decisions like getting married or buying housing in order to pay off accrued student debt.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trading on his bipartisanship and collegiality, 52nd Congressional District incumbent Scott Peters, a Democrat, branded his Republican challenger, Carl DeMaio, as “divisive, something Congress doesn\u2019t need right now.” Speaking a week after DeMaio at the Mission Beach Rotary Club at Pacific Beach\u2019s Catamaran Hotel, Peters said his record shows he\u2019s adopted a “less-partisan, less-divided approach […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":265164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Peters touts bipartisanship, economic stimulation in sprint for state\u2019s 52nd Congressional District","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}