Rogers hits back at remark from ‘the gutter’

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer (D-Calif.) yesterday called Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) a “dumb shit,” prompting a retort from the lawmaker’s office that “when you are wrong on facts and wrong on policy, the gutter is the only place you can go.”

Lockyer delivered his coarse appraisal of Rogers at a press conference Tuesday at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, where he and five other attorneys general spoke against the National Uniformity for Food Act.

Rogers is a co-sponsor of the bill, which the House will vote on tomorrow.

Lockyer made his remark after reading a comment Rogers made Monday in defense of the bill. Rogers had issued a statement saying, “The reason the bill has moved swiftly is that a pregnant woman buying peas on a shelf in Michigan has the same right to food-safety information as a pregnant woman buying peas in California.”

After Lockyer’s retort, which included comment that Congress has not held a hearing on the bill and that there are no labeling regulations on peas, Hawaii Attorney General Mark Bennett jokingly thanked the Californian for “restraining” himself.

Rogers’s press secretary, Sylvia Warner, said, “apparently the attorney general does not have a broad vocabulary” before adding the suggestion that Lockyer had debased the debate.

The five attorneys general are among 37 who sent a letter to Congress on March 1 urging members to oppose the legislation because it “undercuts states’ rights and consumer protection.” The letter caused Congress to delay voting on the bill for a week.

Lockyer has been an outspoken opponent of the legislation, which he calls “a case of Congress protecting special interests over consumers.”

During a teleconference last week, Lockyer took a political shot, saying that the “party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt is now a rubber stamp for big business.” Yesterday, speaking among a bipartisan group, Lockyer referred to the bill as “bipartisan mischief.”

Lockyer, in his second term as attorney general, was a state legislator for 25 years.

If enacted, the legislation would create national food-safety standards and warning requirements that would supercede state rules. Supporters of the bill argue that creating national regulatory standards will ensure basic levels of safety for all Americans. Opponents say the proposal violates the federal system.