Voters will decide who will take the seat in California’s 50th Congressional District this November. This area in San Diego was last represented by Duncan Hunter until last year when Hunter was indicted. He and his wife were accused of spending over $250,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses including a plane ticket for the family’s pet rabbit.
Republican Darrell Issa is one of the candidates vying to fill the seat. Issa served in the House of Representatives from 2001 to 2019. He tells Inside the Issues the most important issue to people in his area centers around the pandemic and how it’s affecting health care, jobs, and the economy.
“That’s where people see the uncertainty,” he said. “They know there’s a risk to 1 ½ or 2 per 1,000 that get infected are going to die, but they also know that businesses are dying. They’re being shuttered and they want to know that this isn’t going to happen again and how we’re going to get back to work and getting back to work safely is one solution, getting a real cure for this disease is a possible solution.”
Congress should be working on ways to provide economic relief for those in need and he agrees there is reason to be upset with the government for not providing it fast enough, saying he understands residents’ frustrations.
“They should be mad,” said Issa. “If you want all or nothing in Congress, you are in fact part of the problem. If you want to solve part of the problem, not necessarily all of the problem, you’re part of the solution. It doesn't matter what the problem is.”
While many are concerned about what the coronavirus could mean for developing a pre-existing condition and how that could affect their health insurance, Issa said as a former member of Congress, he submitted his own plan as an alternative to Obamacare.
“During the Obama Administration President Obama said the Republicans didn't have a plan. I submitted a plan. It was very straightforward. I even offered it as an amendment to Obamacare,” he said. “And what it did was it opened up the federal employee health benefit plans, of which there are hundreds of them, every name you can think of in the way of insurance, and said, you know what, if we would let people simply join those plans, one, there is a range of services, two, every one of them exempted pre-existing conditions so that wasn’t a factor, it isn’t a factor for the federal employee, it shouldn't be a factor for people coming in from the outside, and last, because they were already large groups of hundreds of thousands or millions of people it meant, that people could join it without having to worry that somehow the price was going to change dramatically.”
The cost of health care needs to be reduced, which Issa said is not determined by insurance companies.
“Health care cost is fixed by liability reform, FDA reform, other reforms that would reduce unnecessary procedures and drive down the cost of products and services we need and those changes are completely separate from the debate and need to be had. We need to drive down the cost of health care,” he said. “The same procedure in most of the developed world will be cheaper than it is in the U.S. The same procedure — even with the same board-certified doctor.”
Issa has said his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, has changed his progressive tune to be a bit more moderate to appeal to more voters, after losing the seat in 2018. Campa-Najjar has called Issa a carpetbagger for not currently living in the district.
“In this case, I represented a third of this district for my first 12 years including Valley Center, Ramona, Julien, and Temecula. So, the idea that I'm not well invested in this area, where I raised my family and built my business starting in 1985, several years before Ammar was born, doesn’t pass the laugh test,” he said.
“As you know, he was born outside the district. When he was in Gaza for four years, it was outside the district, when he went to college it was outside the district, when he worked in Washington for four years he was outside the district,” he continued. “I don't think it's about where you currently can say how many years you've lived in the district. Are you invested in the community? I'm deeply invested in the community.”
Issa said he was a board member of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, active in nonprofit and homeless services.
“The fact is, I’m not taking away his qualifications in his 31 years, but I have more than 31 years of community service and charity and involvement here in the 50th Congressional District.”
Historically a conservative district, the area has begun to gain more support from Democrats, with recent polls showing the two competitors neck-in-neck in gaining support. President Donald Trump has endorsed Issa for the seat, saying Washington “badly” needs him.
Issa said he supports much of what President Trump has done while in office.
“He got NATO to pay their fair share. He is responsible for the breakthroughs in Middle East peace, not just for Israel but for our ability to operate around the world. He was able to redo that USMCA. I was a proponent of NAFTA but this is better, it’s an improvement and I commend him for it,” he said of his support. “Look, I'm a conservative Republican, I'm also pretty libertarian, but I've also worked on high-tech issues, worked on court reform, worked on transparency in government. There’s a lot of things that are uniquely Darrell Issa and a lot of is holding the government accountable.”
“So, when somebody like President Trump says he wants to drain the swamp, I invite him to join what I've been doing for almost two decades, which is exposing waste fraud abuse in government, which I believe is one of the most important jobs that you send someone to Washington for,” he continued. “With over $4 trillion dollars in spending and, for example, $100 billion dollars in Medicare alone, known waste and fraud, there's plenty of money that people in Congress need to help save and that’s been part of my job.”
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