Better Know a District

So the elections are roughly a month away, and I've been doing research here and there, but I figure I'd better square some stuff away. May as well do it in writing so that no one else can be helped by it, right? I DIGRESS.

Anyway, I'll start with my current home district: New Jersey's Third Congressional. Two years ago, John Adler defeated Chris Myers for the seat, and this time he's up against former NFL player Jon Runyan. Here's a quick list of the platforms of the two.

Republican John Runyan

• Various federal tax cuts, the vast majority being across the board. A deep cut of 15% recommended for all income tax brackets and a lowering of the corporate taxation to 25%, an effective slash of about 29%. Also in favor of lowering capital gains taxation.
  
• Several ideas for balancing the federal budget, including requiring a supermajority to raise taxes. Takes a big dig at career politicians for "being unwilling or unable" to balance the budget without naming any names. Well, he does namedrop Reagan when suggesting a "Red Ink Task Force" which would identify inefficiencies in budgets, then letting Congress vote on each one.
• Congressional term limits. Specifically, Runyan states that he will limit himself to no more than four terms or eight years in Congress.
• Desire to allow cross-state health care plans.
• Promise to protect New Jersey coastline and beaches with money secured from the federal government.
• Stresses the importance of taking care of returning veterans with a few platitudes, but makes no specific promises regarding health care or financial support.
• Pro-civil unions but against marriage equality.
• Seems to be completely pro-Israel, including continuing economic and military aid in order to defend "a tiny beacon of democracy surrounded by authoritarian regimes."
• Against privatization of Medicare/Social Security.

Basically boiler-plate Republican, essentially, right down to the I-don't-like-it-but-it's-popular-and-old-people-vote position of keeping Medicare and Social Security publicly funded and secured and the "we should respect our returning veterans" without really detailing how. Anyway, figure I'll make some responses in no particular order:

• The first two sort of go together; lower taxes means you have to drastically lower spending in order to still balance the budget. Remember, everybody: raising taxes and cutting programs have the same effect on the deficit. I'm entirely for a clause of neutral spending - that the government cannot spend more than it has on hand. Unfortunately, tax cuts make this harder, and we'll find out why:

This is a chart showing the 2010 Congressional Budget. The blue bar on the left is revenue and the red bar is spending. As you can pretty clearly see, "Mandatory" spending (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Interest on the National Debt, welfare, unemployment, etc.) has risen to an estimated cost of $2.184 trillion. That's about 92% of the total revenue for the government. Runyan supports these programs, and thus nothing can be done about this cost.

Although Runyan states no specifics on whether or not military spending should be increased or decreased, the Department of Defense spending is also a point that the Republicans hammer home. As can be seen above, Defense spending for 2010 is pegged at $664 billion, or about 30% of the revenues collected. So, even if you cut funding to absolutely every Department other than Defense:

Mandatory + Defense = $2,184 billion + $664 billion = $2,848 billion, or about 20% higher than the revenue. Obviously, you could cut some Medicare and welfare spending, but there's such a huge deficit now that you could barely dent the national debt at this point without some major reforms.

It's unfortunate that the United States has fallen so behind when it comes to national debt. We were doing so well in the late nineties.

• Term limits, in general, are a good thing. A lot of money and effort go into running re-election campaigns for incumbent politicians, when said politicians should be concentrating on their constituencies and the issues at hand. That said, this is generally simply a talking point for politicians; Runyan for example claims he'll only be serving at most four terms in the House. John Adler kicked off his campaign in roughly March this year, and thus campaign season is roughly 30% of his term. However, I don't think a promise to serve any more than one term would be productive; if Runyan theoretically did serve eight years in the House, and assuming a roughly seven-month campaign season, he'd still be spending 22% of his time campaigning. This isn't to mention that much of the time, these promises are simply not held to.
  
• In terms of protecting the New Jersey shoreline, I agree wholeheartedly. This is precisely the kind of funding that the government is there for - providing money and support to protect, rekindle, and promote resources. As a Representative, Jon Runyan would be entirely correct in bringing home this kind of pork to his state. That's what politicians are there for - to fight for their home constituencies and bring home the bacon.
• Obviously, I'm for marriage equality when it comes to gay and lesbian couples. I honestly think, though, that somewhere between 40 and 60% of Republicans simply tow the party line here because it's convenient and helps them get elected.
• Finally, material support for Israel ended in 2007, but it's hard to see why the United States should remain as the main benefactor for the country. Obviously, Israel has the ability to fend for itself. Palestinians within Israel suffer great injustice, as well, with laws being passed at times specifically making Palestinian life utterly miserable. The main reason that it's so easy to expand Israeli settlements into Palestinian land is that laws are passed by the Israelis that essentially make Palestinians violate the law every second of every day. They broke the rules, so they get evicted.

Since I'm much more likely to agree with Adler, I'll color the positions I agree with or disagree with accordingly:

Democrat John Adler

• Adler is pro-Israel. I think both parties are forced to be such, considering the demographics in New Jersey. Pandering will never die.
• Strongly opposes the privatization of Medicare and Social Security.
• Advocates middle class tax cuts and is for a deficit-neutral requirement on all federal spending.
• Advocates and agrees with the phased troop withdrawal from Iraq and continuation of the war in Afghanistan. I'm not quite sure withdrawal from Afghanistan is really tenable at the moment, so I'm fairly neutral on that.
• Offshore-drilling being opened up on New Jersey shores. This would certainly decrease the dependence on foreign oil, but by a very small amount, and would not decrease dependence on oil period.
• The New GI Bill and better health care to veterans. Veterans of foreign wars deserve nothing but the best health care and opportunities for education for their sacrifices.
• Though not truly part of his platform, Adler is rated as one of the top ten most "centrist" Congresspeople. I think this is a good thing, as I believe that the Third District is a very "in the middle" one and, thus, its constituents deserve a centrist candidate.
  

Anyway, I think I've rambled enough on this post. Hopefully this is helpful; it certainly was for me deciding what I liked or didn't like about both the candidates.