Easy Choice in the Third

There has never been an easier decision than there is this year for voters in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District.

All three candidates profess to believe in the very same things: a smaller and more efficient Federal government, reducing the Federal deficit, lower taxes and making changes to the recently passed health care reform legislation.

One of the candidates, Jon Runyan, will be caucusing with a Leadership and colleagues who believe in the same policies and principles - The Republicans. The other, John Adler, will be caucusing with a Leadership and colleagues who do not believe as he does - The Democrats. And the third candidate, Peter DeStefano, is a fraud who has been rejected by the very party to which he professes to belong - The Tea Party - and so will caucus alone.

Let’s be honest: There is really just one number that matters in the House elections this November and that number is 218, or one more than half of the 435 Members of the House. It is the number of Representatives that one party must elect in order to elect the Speaker; appoint Committee and Subcommittee Chairs and control the agenda.

Jon Runyan will vote to elect a Republican as Speaker, presumably John Boehner of Ohio. John Adler will vote to re-elect Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Peter DeStefano’s next vote will be in his fire district election.

And so despite what John Adler says - and I like John, I have known him for the better part of two decades - you cannot vote for him. A vote for Adler is contrary to what even HE believes and would like to see happen in Washington.

Here is all you need to know about the current majority leadership in the United States House of Representatives (although I will tell you more):

On January 4, 2007, the day she became Speaker, Nancy Pelosi said, “Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt." On that day, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal deficit was $161 billion. Three years later, the deficit stands at $1.41 trillion. That is a “T” there folks, not a “B.” I think we can safely conclude that the promise Madame Speaker made to “future generations” has been broken - indeed shattered, with shards of broken glass strewn across the nation.

As you go to the polls on November 2nd, keep just one civic lesson in mind: Congress controls the purse strings. No President can spend one thin dime that has not been appropriated by the Congress. Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have conspired to bankrupt the richest nation on earth. The unborn baby girl being carried by my oldest daughter will open her eyes next February to a mountain of debt she inherited. I would like for her to at least have some hope that a new team in Washington is working to dig us out.

But you say, “Well, if the Democrats hold on to both Houses of Congress, they will be chastened. They will have learned their lesson. They will act differently.” ALL of the evidence is the contrary, however. The evidence points to a more emboldened Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid; a more anxious leadership intent upon enacting their liberal and costly agenda before “it is REALLY too late!” And John Adler will not be able to stop them. After all, he could not stop them on health care reform, now could he?

Following the elections of last November when Chris Christie beat an incumbent Jon Corzine who was outspending him five to one; when Republicans captured the governorship of Virginia as well; you would think a message would have been received at the White House and in the halls of Congress. But nothing changed. They plowed forward. And when Scott Brown took a Kennedy Senate seat in Massachusetts, well then, by golly, you would think that someone would notice. But, no, health care reform followed with nary a bone for the upstart rebel electorates in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts. And certainly there was no compromise for those Tea Party rascals who the President most recently characterized as “a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president.”

The only number they will listen to is one they cannot ignore. That’s right: 218. If you live in the Third Congressional District, you can add one more vote toward that goal by voting for Jon Runyan.