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To the Journal editor:
After nearly a decade in Congress representing the First Congressional District of Michigan, Jack Bergman is ineffective in solving the problems facing our district.
While he has voted for everything President Trump wants and has been endorsed by the president in his bid for re-election, apparently Jack Bergman cannot pick up the phone and ask the president for help with issues that matter to the people in our district.
Lt. Gen. Bergman touts his rank and position on the Committee on Armed Services, but he is unable to get the Pentagon to take action on significant problems in our district.
In a rare speech on the floor of the House of Representative last December. Representative Bergman called for cleaning up toxic chemicals on military sites nationwide. He focused on PFAS, the forever chemicals in fire retardants that are hormone disrupters linked to birth defects, developmental delays, and several types of cancer. PFAS contamination occurs at several military sites in our First Congressional District, including the former K.I.Sawyer base near Marquette.
Good for Rep. Bergman to call attention to this important issue! Unfortunately, it seems no one is listening to him.
Next, he tried writing a letter to the Pentagon. Writing letters is his most frequent and most ineffective strategy for solving problems. Remember when he wrote a letter to the U.S. Postal Service complaining about slow mail delivery in the Upper Peninsula? No action was taken to remedy that problem. Remember his letter to the prime minister of Canada on July 15, demanding that he stop the smoke from wildfires drifting across the border? It didn't work.
According to an article in The New York Times on July 30, titled, "Bipartisan Anger Grows at Pentagon's Delayed 'Forever Chemicals' Cleanups," the reporter reviewed Rep. Bergman's letter to the Pentagon dated May 20. NYT reports that Rep. Bergman's letter states: "I will be direct: The community of Oscoda has endured more than a decade of contamination, broken promises and institutional whiplash from the Air Force." In the First Congressional District, Oscoda is the location of the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base where severely contaminated soil and drinking water was discovered in 2010.
His letter admits his inability to solve this problem, stating, "I am running out of ways to explain to my constituents why the service they trusted with their community continues to treat them this way."
The people of the First Congressional District have given Jack Bergman the responsibility of representing us, but he has shown himself to be ineffective. Worse than ineffective, he has voted in ways that have hurt our district by cutting services and jobs and raising the cost of health care, housing, groceries and gasoline.
It is time to elect someone else. Callie Barr is the smart, hardworking, energetic alternative on the ballot in November. She actually lives in our district and she shows up.
Callie Barr will represent us effectively in Congress.