Commentary: Letter overstated congressman’s role in water bill

I read “Dana Rohrabacher has returned federal funds to our district” by Shawn Dewane in the Feb. 23 Daily Pilot. Dewane’s claim that former Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh would have the “big shoes” of Rohrabacher to fill if he were to be elected to Congress is incorrect.

Rohrabacher’s 26-year performance in Congress has been remarkably weak (small shoes) and neither Rohrabacher nor Baugh should be in Congress, particularly if Baugh is just going to fill the same old small shoes.

The anger that is evident in the Republican electorate’s rejection of the establishment candidates and embrace of the outsider is to be expected under the rule that “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Rohrabacher is emblematic of the legislators who need rejecting.

Dewane makes the exaggerated, implied claim that Rohrabacher alone brought federal funds back to O.C. for the ground water replenishment system. It turns out that Rohrabacher was only a co-sponsor of the bill that Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) sponsored and led for several years and pushed through Congress.

We know that Rohrabacher didn’t sponsor the bill because Congress.gov reports, as of January, that he has sponsored 305 bills over his 26 years in Congress, but has only gotten three passed into law. None of the laws were related to water projects.

After the water replenishment bill was enacted, the GOP co-sponsors, including Rohrabacher, discontinued their support of funding the expansion of the water replenishment system in 2010 with their misguided moratorium on Congressional-directed spending.

This unilateral and extreme moratorium is inconsistent with good governance, and spending problems could have been dealt with in a bipartisan manner, rather than such drastic and questionable actions.

When I was growing up, my best friend’s father was a Republican congressman, and he made the appeal to a “common ground” approach to politics. This is a far cry from the obstructionist GOP and its supporters like Rohrabacher, who have refused for the last several years to bring back our district’s tax money to federally fund badly needed local projects.

I am running for Congress to replace Rohrabacher, to give voters in the 48th Congressional District the choice they deserve for a better representative who will fight for them on many fronts. I will specifically return voters’ tax dollars back to our district for critically important infrastructure improvements. Voters in the 48th District have a true choice in 2016.

Balboa Island resident SUZANNE SAVARY is a Democratic candidate for the 48th Congressional District.