Dana Tyron Rohrabacher (born June 21, 1947, in Coronado, California), is a Californian politician, who has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1989 and currently represents California's 46th congressional district.
Education
Rohrabacher graduated from Palos Verdes High School in Palos Verdes Estates, California, attended Los Angeles Harbor College, and earned a bachelor's degree in history at California State University, Long Beach in 1969. He received his master's degree in American Studies at the University of Southern California. While in graduate school and during the early 1970s, he had a side activity as a folk singer.
Tenure at the Reagan White House
In his younger years, Rohrabacher was an active libertarian associated with Samuel Edward Konkin III, but after undergoing something of a political conversion, he became a conservative Republican and served as assistant press secretary to the 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan. From 1981 to 1988, he was one of then President Reagan's senior speech writers. During his tenure at the White House, Rohrabacher played a leading role in the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine. He also helped formulate President Reagan's Economic Bill of Rights, which was a series of policy proposals that Reagan introduced in a speech at the Jefferson Memorial.
Congressional career
Rohrabacher left the administration in 1988 to pursue the open House seat recently vacated by Dan Lungren. With the fundraising help of friend Oliver North, Rohrabacher was able to win the Republican primary and capture the seat, centered around northern coastal Orange County. A friend and fellow White House aide, Chris Cox, won a southern Orange County seat in the same election. The pair remain close although Cox was chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission until he resigned as chairman of the SEC on January 20, 2009.
Rohrabacher chaired the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science Committee from 1997 until January 2005; he received a two-year waiver to serve beyond the six-year term limit.
As a senior member of the International Relations Committee, Rohrabacher led the effort to deny Most Favored Nation trading status to the People's Republic of China, citing that nation's dismal human rights record and opposition to democracy. His subcommittee assignments are East Asia and Pacific, and Middle East and South Asia.
Committee assignments
- Committee on Foreign Affairs
- Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment
- Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight (Ranking Member)
- Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia
- Committee on Science and Technology
- Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics
Political positions
Obama and Iran
During an appearance on MSNBC's The Ed Show , Rohrabacher accused Barack Obama of allowing violence in Iran to get out of hand because he did not speak forcefully enough against the country's leadership. He also claimed that Gorbachev tore down the Berlin Wall because Reagan told him to (“Tear down this wall”).
Illegal immigration
Rohrabacher is a staunch opponent of illegal immigration and was an advocate for California's Proposition 187, which denied government services to illegal immigrants. In 2004, he sponsored a bill that would have prohibited federal reimbursement of hospital-provided emergency care and certain transportation services to undocumented aliens unless the hospital provided information about the aliens' citizenship, immigration status, financial data, and employer to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Aliens who were in the country illegally would receive reimbursement only after they were deported. The proposed bill was overwhelmingly defeated.
On March 30, 2006, Rohrabacher decried a guest worker proposal as a "foul odor that's coming out of the United States Senate." He said that if illegal immigrants who do many farm jobs were deported, "the millions of young men who are prisoners around our country can pick the fruits and vegetables. I say, let the prisoners pick the fruits."
In early 2008, Rohrabacher endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary, citing his positions on stemming illegal immigration and criticizing John McCain. About McCain, he said, "He's been the enemy of those of us who have stemmed the flow of illegals into our country, whereas Romney has made some very tough commitments."
Voting rights for DC residents
In January 2004, Rohrabacher proposed giving Washington, D.C. residents the right to vote for congressional representation by treating them as Maryland residents for the purpose of Congressional elections.
Opposition to current Ethiopian government
In March 2005, Rohrabacher introduced HR 1061, the American Property Claims Against Ethiopia Act, which would "prohibit United States assistance to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia until the Ethiopian government returns all property of United States citizens." The bill was introduced by Rohrabacher at the behest of Gebremedhin Berhane, a former Eritrean national and friend of the Rohrabacher family, after his business was expropriated by the Ethiopian government.
On March 7, 2006, Rohrabacher introduced HR 4895, an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, "to limit the provision of the United States military assistance and the sale, transfer, or licensing of United States military equipment or technology to Ethiopia."
Medical marijuana
Unlike most Republican Party members of Congress, Rohrabacher is a supporter of the medicinal use of marijuana as a right of the state. He and Maurice Hinchey have jointly offered the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment to a Commerce Justice and Science appropriations bill that would prohibit the Department of Justice from prosecuting patients in states that have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes. Rohrabacher said that conservatives should take states' rights into consideration when they consider the issue of marijuana.
South-Ossetian Crisis
Main article: 2008 South Ossetia warOn September 8, 2008, at a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, Rorabacher argued that the Georgians had initiated the recent military confrontation in the ongoing Russian-South Ossetian conflict. .
LGBT issues
In a debate at Orange Coast College, he voiced his support for Proposition 8, which defines marriage in California as only between a man and a woman, and said that he "would suggest not changing the definition of marriage in our society to make a small number of people feel more comfortable."
Space-related positions
Rohrabacher was chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics from 1997 to January 2005 and has been active on space-related issues. In 2000, Space.com described Rohrabacher as "a strident advocate for supremacy in space, a philosophy shaped along a winding road from libertarian activist to White House speech writer in the Reagan administration." In 2007, Rohrabacher introduced a bill that would direct NASA to develop a strategy “for deflecting and mitigating potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.”
Global warming
Rohrabacher is skeptical of claims that global warming is caused by humans. During a congressional hearing on climate change on February 8, 2007, Rohrabacher sarcastically mused that previous warming cycles may have been caused by carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by "dinosaur flatulence."
Congressional scorecards
See also
- Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
Controversies
Involvement with Jack Abramoff
Rohrabacher has been close friends with, and has received campaign contributions from, the now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff since the mid-1980s. He was one of the only House members to publicly come to the defense of disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff to reporters, described him as an "honest man" to the Washington Post and praised him as a "selfless patriot" to a federal judge. Rohrabacher admits to being a longtime friend of Abramoff. He told the Associated Press: "They're portraying Jack as a monster. I see him more as a good person who's done bad things and has to be punished for doing bad things.... I think that he obviously has done some things that are wrong and illegal, and he's going to have to pay the price for it.” Rohrabacher has publicly taken the position that he believes, “... a lot of other things that have been characterized as corruption on the part of Abramoff are actually standard oper
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