With regards to the Howard Jacobson letter, Oct. 23, and Sara Gair
letter of Oct. 25 attacking Rep. James Rogan's record, there has been a
pattern throughout this campaign of misrepresenting Rogan's record. When
a bill has harmful underlying provisions, I would prefer that our
congressman have the courage to vote against a badly written bill until
the bill is appropriately revised.
For example, Schiff supporters have taken every opportunity to distort
Rogan's position on HMO reform. Rogan supports HMO reform, but he wisely
voted against the Norwood-Dingle HMO Reform Bill because it contained a
provision that allowed employees to sue their employer merely because the
employer had provided the health insurance. If Norwood-Dingle had passed,
most employers would have stopped providing health insurance in order to
avoid exposure to costly litigation.
Security trust funds for tax cuts during the time Mr. Rogan has been
in Congress, and the senior organizations that she brands as shams are
actually legitimate senior organizations (as verified by the AARP).
An important fact that Jacobson and Gair fail to consider is that
during the 40-year span ending in 1994 the Democrats had control of
Congress. If the Democrats had been interested in balancing the budget,
they could have easily done so, however the facts are that they never
balanced one budget and never saved a dime of the Social Security
surplus. It was only after the Republicans gained control of Congress in
1994 that we had a balanced budget. It was Rogan, not a Democrat, who
sponsored the "lock box" legislation to prevent government bureaucrats
from continuing to spend the Social Security surplus.
Rogan's opponent, Adam Schiff, has been a consistent supporter of all
Democrat sponsored legislation in the state Senate, never voting against
a Democrat sponsored bill, even when those bills favored unions over our
own city. Why would we consider sending Adam Schiff to Washington when he
has proven himself to be an old time "vote the party line" Liberal
Democrat who will do the trial lawyers' and unions' bidding and squander
all of the surplus on expanding government programs.
For over a year, the AFL-CIO and other labor unions have sponsored "a
voter education project" in Rogan's congressional district which uses
paid employees from outside the district to work full time feeding our
local reporters with negative stories on Rogan. It is revealing that many
of the letters that appear in local newspapers criticizing Rogan use the
same "talking points" that the professional democrat spin doctors and
character assassins use on the nightly cable political analysis shows.
As a longtime resident of Glendale, I think Rogan has consistently
represented the views of the community and deserves to be elected to
another term.
Larry Glenn
Glendale
