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LAWRENCE: Debating differences

Congressional candidates hosted by Rider institute

By Philip Sean Curran, Packet Media Group
   LAWRENCE — Rep. Rush Holt and his Republican challenger Eric Beck in the 12th Congressional District race clashed Wednesday on how best to shore up federal entitlement programs, fix the country’s finances and jumpstart the economy.
   Mr. Holt, a seven-term Democrat from Hopewell, said his party has proposed extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class, but he said “instrangience” by House GOP leadership has blocked a deal.
   ”We have said, OK, let’s continue to argue about whether would should have a tax cut for the higher income, the top 2 percent of income earners. But let’s go ahead with the tax cut for the middle class,” Mr. Holt said.
   Mr. Beck, a small businessman from Dayton who runs a consulting firm, sidestepped a question about the Bush tax cuts. Instead, he called for scrapping the current tax code and having a 15-percent flat tax — borrowing an idea from former GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes.
   He criticized the federal stimulus program by saying that the most conservative of estimates found it cost $278,000 in federal money for every job it created. “That is the definition of economic inefficiency. It is wasteful. It is the destruction of wealth,” said Mr. Beck.
   Mr. Holt, a Hopewell Township resident, recalled the jobs picture right before President Barack Obama took office and in the first month of his administration, when the economy was shedding 800,000 jobs a month. “Nobody really even understood what deep a hole we were in,” he said
   ”There was no alternative” to the stimulus, he continued.
   ”Nobody is happy with the current economic situation,” Mr. Holt said in a state with a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate. “But we have to recognize that millions of jobs have been created in part through the economic stimulus and in part through other activities to encourage energy production and that sort of thing.”
   Mr. Beck said there was an alternative. He said American corporations are sitting on $2 trillion “waiting out this president” amid uncertainty about regulatory burdens. “The goal should have been to figure out a way to provide them the confidence, involve them in the process so that we could free up private money” to have “sustainable job creation.”
   For his part, Mr. Holt said those corporations are “unpatriotic that they are not doing that. The idea that they are waiting for certainty is nonsense.”
   The debate, held on the campus of Rider University, followed a format in which both candidates answered questions from moderator Ben Dworkin, director of the school’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, and then engaged in a broader discussion about the subject.
   Mr. Dworkin bounced back and forth between foreign and domestic issues, from entitlements to campaign finance reform to foreign policy in the Middle East. Some recent hot-button topics, including the murder of four foreign service workers in Libya, did not come up.
   ”Clearly, we’ve had a problem in this country not with taxation but with spending,” said Mr. Beck. “I do believe that we have to live within our means. We’re spending too much money.”
   Mr. Beck, 54, said spending is up due to growing entitlement costs. He proposed raising the retirement age for workers who are 55 and younger, although he did not specify a number.
   For his part, Mr. Holt said the Social Security system is not in deep trouble, despite Mr. Beck saying there are $8 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The Democrat said he saw no need to privatize Social Security or make dramatic changes to eligibility. But he said the system will need to be fixed to make changes to the income and the “outgo,” or amount of benefits the system pays out.
   Asked about foreign policy in the Middle East, Mr. Beck said the country needs “to support democracies that are willing to share and to implement on a broad basis America’s values.” “How can the country of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams not support people who are trying to overthrow despots and tyrants? We must. We owe it to them,” Mr. Holt said. “We have to side with freedom and democracy.”
   Mr. Beck, though, said he opposed sending American ground troops to protect civilians in Syria. He said “our goal in Syria should be stability to the extent we can achieve it.”
   The 12th Congressional District, redrawn after redistricting, includes all of Trenton. To help Trenton and other cities, Mr.Holt said the federal government needs to pay attention to education, create jobs and invest in infrastructure.
   Mr. Dworkin asked the candidates about federally funded vouchers for inner-city parents to send their children to a different school. Mr. Holt said vouchers tend to take funds away from the places that need them most. But Mr. Beck said he supported experimenting with vouchers.
   Mr. Beck holds his bachelor’s and his MBA degrees from Rutgers University. Mr. Holt, a physicist, has been in Congress since 1999. He defeated Princeton resident Scott Sipprelle by seven points in 2010.