At campaign events in Norco and San Clemente with Democracy for America Chair Jim Dean on Thursday, Democratic congressional candidate Bill Hedrick pledged to fight any attempts to privatize Social Security and called on Congress to keep its “hands off” the successful program.

Hedrick, in a tight race with U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) for California’s 44th Congressional District, also reiterated his opposition to raising the retirement age, cutting benefits to retirees and spending surplus Social Security funds.

“Social Security isn’t some sort of lab specimen for career politicians in Washington to experiment with,” Hedrick said. “My opponent voted to implement President Bush’s privatization plan, but I stand with the people in telling Congress and Ken Calvert to keep their hands off Social Security.”

Hedrick cited a vote Calvert cast to advance the implementation of a Social Security privatization plan developed by President Bush’s Social Security commission [HR 2590, Vote #273, 7/25/01]. The commission was criticized for being stacked with pro-privatization members and the plan was never implemented.

“When you’re Ken Calvert, profiting hundreds of thousands of dollars on land deals subsidized by taxpayer-funded earmarks, then of course you will never realize how important Social Security is to the nearly 90,000 people in our district who rely on it,” Hedrick said.

Bill Hedrick has dedicated 35 years to teaching our children and advocating for educators in our public schools. He currently serves on the Corona-Norco Unified School District Board of Education, overseeing the 8th largest school district in California, serving 53,000 students. Bill is the board’s longest serving member at 22 years and has served five terms as president. In 2008, he came within 3,100 votes of unseating Congressman Ken Calvert, making the 2010 rematch for California’s 44th Congressional District one of the most competitive in the state.

Criticizes Opponent for Attempting to Weaken Law In Spite of District’s Poor Air Quality

Corona-Norco school board member and Democratic congressional candidate Bill Hedrick told supporters today he’ll support the Clean Air Act while in Congress and work with clean air advocates as well as federal and local officials in improving the Riverside-San Bernardino region’s poor air quality.

“Congressman Calvert has been breathing the air in Washington for so long that he’s forgotten about the air that the rest of us breathe here at home,” Hedrick said. “Must be something in the Washington air that makes career politicians like Ken Calvert put special interest polluters ahead of regular people.”

Standing next to a copy of a full page ad national environmental organizations ran in the Washington Post criticizing Calvert, Hedrick noted the $350,000 Calvert has received over his career from oil, gas and electrical utility special interests to fund his political campaigns.

Hedrick, at a rally and press conference at Santana Regional Park in Corona Wednesday afternoon, also criticized his opponent, Congressman Ken Calvert, for trying weaken the EPA’s authority to enforce the Clean Air Act while representing an inland district struggling with poor air quality.

Riverside County, which covers roughly three quarters of California’s 44th Congressional District, has been ranked by the American Lung Association as second in the country for ozone pollution and third for long-term fine particle pollution.

Bill Hedrick has dedicated 35 years to teaching our children and advocating for educators in our public schools. He currently serves on the Corona-Norco Unified School District Board of Education, overseeing the 8th largest school district in California, serving 53,000 students. Bill is the board’s longest serving member at 22 years and has served five terms as president. In 2008, he came with 3,100 votes of defeating Congressman Ken Calvert, making the 2010 rematch for California’s 44th Congressional District one of the most competitive in the state.

Congress is heading back home for the August recess this week. Apparently our Senators need to rest after they failed to take up both a clean energy and climate bill and an oil spill bill.

Legislative inaction must be more tiring than I realized.

Still, I don’t view this month as a cooling off period. If anything, it’s time to turn up the heat.

Over the next few weeks, Senators will be holding “town hall meetings” in their states. Last year, these meetings came to define the health care debate. This year, they could help us reshape America’s energy policy.

If you are like me and you are still stunned that the Senate refused to pass a bill that would have created nearly 2 million new American jobs, put our nation at the forefront of the clean energy market and helped end our addiction to oil, then go to a town hall meeting and tell your lawmakers what you think.

Tell them that it is in America’s best interest to embrace clean energy now.

And while you are at it, please tell them to block attempts by some Senators to weaken the Clean Air Act-the 40-year-old law that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives-in an effort to further delay reductions in global warming pollution.  

Some naysayers claim that voting on visionary legislation is a risky proposition when we are this close to an election. They are wrong, and history proves it.

As I wrote in a recent blog post, 13 of the most powerful environmental laws were passed during the fall of an election year or in the lame duck sessions following elections.  

We can pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation this fall, but only if we demand it of our lawmakers.

Use this August to make your voices heard. You can find your Senators’ schedules by checking their Senate websites, as well as their candidate websites – Republican or Democratic.

Just when you thought the U.S. Senate couldn't do any less for clean energy and the environment than it's (not) done so far, we now face the real possibility of what would amount to a “stop-work order” on the 40-year-old, wildly successful (e.g., studies finding benefits outweighing costs at a 40:1 ratio), Clean Air Act.

We didn’t need any more evidence that the Bush Administration uses the executive branch as a political instrument.  But this latest example shows that they will use federal agencies to work to oppose legislative efforts at the state level, making a complete mockery of the entire premise of federalism itself.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Henry Waxman has received information that the Department of Transportation has been lobbying members of Congress to oppose state efforts, sought by California and others, to regulate tailpipe emissions.  California is waiting for an EPA waiver to implement their tailpipe emissions proposal.  The Governor has threatened to sue the EPA if they don’t receive that waiver.  The first roadblock that the EPA tried was to appeal to the Supreme Court by claiming that they didn’t have the ability to regulate greenhouse gases, but in a landmark decision the Supreme Court said that they did.  So plan B, apparently, is to use the DOT to threaten legislators in automobile-producing districts that their local economies would be severly impacted by any efforts to regulate.  This excerpt is from a letter by Waxman to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently considering a request from the State of California for a waiver under the Clean Air Act (Waxman wrote the Clean Air Act -ed.) to establish state motor vehicle emissions standards for greenhouse gases…

My understanding is that the Department of Transportation and the Bush Administration have not taken an official postition on this issue.  However, the staff of a member of Congress recently received a voicemail message from Heideh Shahmoradi, special assistant for governmental affairs in the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, suggesting that the member (1) submit comments to EPA opposing California’s request and (2) “reach out to your governor’s office for them to submit comments since this would greatly impact auto facilities within your district.”

You can read the full text of the voicemail and the entire letter from Rep. Waxman to Sec. Peters at this link.

This is patently illegal.  The DOT, which is supposed to merely regulate and facilitate transportation and not advocate on behalf of automobile interests, is lobbying Congress to influence an EPA ruling that would affect state legislation.  Within the letter, there are other instances of federal agencies in the Clinton Administration distributing talking points supporting or opposing Congressional legislation.  But this goes even further, asking Congress to step in to an exceutive agency decision which will nullify state efforts to tackle global warming.  It allows the President to be supposedly neutral about the EPA ruling while getting Congress to do his dirty work for him.

For the past six years of Republican rule, Congress has done nothing while the planet has continued to warm and spew harnful greenhouse gases into the air.  States like California have stopped waiting around for the feds to get their act together, and put forward their own plan, which is completely legal under the Clean Air Act.  Now the Bush Administration is using federal agencies illegally to try and derail it.  Now that we actually have oversight in the Congress (in one branch, anyway), we are beginning to see the depth of the politicization of these federal agencies, suggesting that what has been done behind the scenes in these two terms of office has been far more destructive that what has been done out in the open.