News
By John Mulcahy
(Dexter, MI) — Brian Rooney said he decided to get into the race for the 7th Congressional District seat last summer when one of his children was in and out of the hospital over a long period.
During the same period, the health care reform law was being debated in Congress. Rooney thinks the new law will “shift the (health care) cost from the insurer to the provider” and cause hospitals to limit care, particularly to neo-natal and aging patients.
“The tipping point for me getting involved was the whole health care debate,” said Rooney, 37, a former lawyer with the conservative Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor and a former Marine Corps captain who served in Iraq.
Rooney calls incumbent Rep. Mark Schauer, D-Battle Creek, “contemptuous of the electorate” because, according to Rooney, Schauer did not host any “open” town hall meetings before he voted for the new heath care law. However, Schauer spokesman Zachary Pohl said Schauer hosted five public forums on the subject, including one in Tecumseh, and a telephone town hall meeting in the summer of 2009.
Rooney faces former congressman and former state representative Tim Walberg of Tipton, and Manchester real estate and property management businessman Marvin Carlson in the Aug. 3 Republican primary for the chance to face Schauer in the November election."
Rooney distinguishes himself from Walberg, whom he considers his chief opponent, by saying he is “not a career politician,” referring to Walberg’s two years in Congress and 16 years in the Michigan Legislature.
More broadly, Rooney says, “I have experience and a resume that fit federal issues very well.”
Rooney is referring in part to his service as a Marine in Iraq from the summer of 2004 to March 2005. Rooney said that among other duties, he went door-to-door in Najaf passing out “condolence payments” to the families of innocent victims of the fighting to “assuage the populace from being angry with the situation,” and also helped set up the largest humanitarian site in Fallujah after the second battle of Fallujah.
Rooney also points to his work at the Thomas More Law Center, where he helped successfully defend Marine Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani against charges he covered up an alleged massacre of civilians in Iraq, and also successfully helped defend a woman on a charge of trespassing while she demonstrated against abortion.
“That case meant a lot to me, because regardless of (your opinion on abortion), you ought to be able to express freedom of speech rights,” Rooney said.
Rooney includes his time living in two border cities, San Diego, Calif., and Yuma, Ariz., where illegal immigration is a major issue in his preparation for federal office.
On key issues such as unemployment insurance, health care, financial reform, jobs and the economy, Rooney — like his opponents — has staked out positions opposing Obama administration policies, programs and legislative victories.
Rooney said he would have voted against the recently passed extension of unemployment benefits. He believes the “newly unemployed” should get help, but that some people can make “more on unemployment than they can working.”
“The thing I fear is the creeping welfare state back into our culture,” said Rooney, who gave some credit to former President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress for the welfare reform bill.
He also would have voted against the recently passed financial reform bill, designed to avert financial crises like the one in 2008, Rooney said.
“I don’t believe the answer to a problem is creating more government,” he said. “We had the (regulatory) tools, we just didn’t have the people ... properly trained.”
Rooney signed a pledge to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s health care plan. He hopes a new, Republican-controlled Congress can change parts of it before 2012, and that Obama is defeated in 2012 and the whole law can be repealed.
He believes people can find common ground on issues such as health insurance for those with pre-existing conditions, but he favors the Republican position of allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, which he believes could “work the fix.”
Rooney would “absolutely not” give more federal aid to the states to help them balance their budgets or pay for programs such as Medicaid, and he would make all of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts permanent, not just those for families making less than $250,000, as Obama has proposed.
He also would get rid of the estate tax, a potentially sensitive issue for Rooney, whose family owns the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, on whose board Rooney sits.
“It’s no secret that my family is being forced to divest part of the Pittsburgh Steelers,” because of the estate tax, he said. “I don’t believe that it’s right that any family ... should be forced to sell because the government says you can’t keep it anymore.”
Rooney wishes President Obama would “talk more about Iraq.”
“It’s a success story, and I think we should be proud of it as Americans,” he said.
He supports the surge in Afghanistan and the president’s firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Rooney said he doesn’t believe Social Security will be there for his generation but he would not change anything for those “in the harbor” of the program now.
Rooney calls himself “Tea Party friendly” but said he “would not want to co-opt this organic movement.”
He believes jobs are the key to economic recovery.
“I don’t want my children to grow up in Michigan and then leave the state after graduating from college because there are not enough jobs here,” he said.
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