GOP CONTENDER TOUTS PLATFORM OF REFORM IN CAPITOL
\nFormer San Diego City Councilman and ex-mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio, a Republican who is running against Democratic Congressional Dist. 52 incumbent Scott Peters, promised locals during an open forum Aug. 11 he will transfer his reform-mindedness from San Diego to Washington, D.C. if elected in November.
\n“I want to take our reform agenda from San Diego and bring it to Washington, balance the budget, create jobs, support workers and small business and start changing the culture of Congress,” DeMaio told Mission Bay Rotarians during a campaign pitch. “Both parties are broken and the dysfunction is outrageous, which is why nothing seems to get done. We\u2019ve got to clean up the mess and dysfunction,” he said.
\nDeMaio\u2019s was the first of two back-to-back meetings hosted by Rotarians, which featured Peters at the same venue, the Catamaran Resort Hotel.
\nTouting his legacy as a pension-reforming City Councilman, DeMaio pointed out opinion polls currently show only a 7 percent approval rating for U.S. legislators.
\n“Congress needs to wake up. They\u2019re out of touch with the American people,” he said, noting he\u2019d institute a number of reforms to streamline federal government.
\nDeMaio proposed making the federal government more transparent by posting legislation like amendments online prior to votes, eliminating special-interest lobbyist and corporate funds for Congressional members\u2019 travel and removing members\u2019 political perks.
\n“I want to make Congress members more transparent and accountable by stripping them of special subsidies for their healthcare and pensions,” DeMaio said. “I don\u2019t believe members should be given benefits that are better than the constituents they serve.”
\nDeMaio said if Congress members are removed from the pension system and have to rely on Social Security, they\u2019ll “make sure those two systems remain solvent and secure.”
\nAsked why voters should choose him rather than Peters, DeMaio replied, “Peters was on the City Council for eight years and he [helped create] the city\u2019s pension crisis and put San Diego on the road to bankruptcy while slashing public services. I was on the City Council for four years and was able to dig the city out of that hole and make the changes necessary to save our city from bankruptcy.”
\nDeMaio fielded questions from audience members especially interested in his stand on immigration.
\n“You have to force Washington to do its job and secure the border,” he answered. “We have to secure the border as a prerequisite to any additional changes we do to make to our immigration system work,” he said.
\nDeMaio said he felt there\u2019s room for compromise on the immigration issue, saying, “The American people agree on 65 to 70 percent of reform.” He said it\u2019s the extreme elements at both ends of the political spectrum that are complicating attempts at reform.
\nAsked his views about the Arab-Israeli conflict, DeMaio said, “I\u2019m 100 percent in support of the Israeli position, particularly seeing the consistent refusal of Hamas to participate in peace accord after peace accord.”
\nDeMaio also gave his take on health-care reform.
\n“I don\u2019t know why health-care exchanges are government-managed,” he said. “I would keep the exchanges but allow them to be privatized. I would pass a bill that would allow you to take any health-care policy from any employer and convert it in an open exchange to a cash equivalent and buy any policy you like.”
\nDeMaio said he\u2019s heard from too many working people who\u2019ve lost their doctors because of Obamacare. “Why should people have to give up their doctors with health-insurance changes?” he asked. “You should be able to keep your own doctor.” DEM PUSHES BI-PARTISANSHIP, ECONOMIC STIMULATION
\nTrading 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":"
GOP CONTENDER TOUTS PLATFORM OF REFORM IN CAPITOL Former San Diego City Councilman and ex-mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio, a Republican who is running against Democratic Congressional Dist. 52 incumbent Scott Peters, promised locals during an open forum Aug. 11 he will transfer his reform-mindedness from San Diego to Washington, D.C. if elected in November. “I […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":268835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"DeMaio, Peters to square off for state's key 52nd Congressional District seat","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[12360,11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duplicate","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268836","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=268836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}