New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature
Garrett, Aronsohn spar at synagogue over budget issues and war in Iraq
Appearing in the same room but at separate times, Rep. Scott Garrett (R-Dist. 5) and his Democratic opponent, Paul Aronsohn, challenged one another’s ideas in a two-hour session Oct. 14 at a Bergen County synagogue.
For Aronsohn, an underdog in the race for a seat that covers Warren County and parts of Bergen, Sussex, and Passaic counties, it was an opportunity to describe his opponent as beholden to the views of the religious Right and the budget policies of the Bush administration.
For Garrett, the event at Temple Sholom in River Edge was a chance to flex his foreign policy credentials and fiscal conservatism and to distance himself — carefully but distinctly — from the administration’s policies on the Iraq war.
Taking advantage of his position as the breakfast meeting’s first guest speaker, Aronsohn said, “The choice is very clear. It is between staying the course and changing that course” of the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress.
Noting that the United States government has an $8 trillion deficit and is spending $8 billion a month, Aronsohn, a former aide in the Clinton administration, claimed the money being wasted on war and debt service could be better spent on health care and homeland security.
On the domestic front, Aronsohn attacked Garrett for opposing federal funding of fetal stem cell research and “women’s reproductive rights, even in the most extreme cases” in which a pregnancy occurs through rape or incest.
“He thinks intelligent design should be taught in the classroom, and thinks it’s OK for Air Force officials to proselytize,” as evangelical Christians have done at the Air Force Academy.
(In an August interview, Garrett told NJ Jewish News that such proselytizing was mandated for people, like himself, who are born-again Christians. “This is a nation that allows people the individual right to practice their religion,” he said.)
Turning to overseas issues, Aronsohn said his opponent “was one of 12 Republicans to write to the president saying there should be no preconditions” for negotiating with Iran over its possible development of nuclear weapons without asking them to suspend their uranium enrichment program.
“I think that’s wrong, and I think that’s dangerous,” said the Democrat.
Aronsohn chided Garrett as a frequent opponent of federal spending on social programs. “Budgets are value documents, and where our priorities lie as a country is enshrined in budget documents,” he said. “When Scott Garrett votes, for instance, to cut Medicaid funding, too often people look at that as just a vote; but is that the kind of society we want to live in?”
Aronsohn, a member of Temple Sholom, moved to the rear of the room as he finished his remarks.
Focus on the family budget
Garrett took the podium to give a ringing defense of his opposition to funding many domestic programs.
The two-term Republican said he prefers to “focus on the family budget rather than the federal budget so that hardworking men and women in this district can make sure their dollars are not wasted in Washington.”
Garrett said he has opposed some appropriations for the war in Iraq — most notably for the building of permanent American military bases on Iraqi soil.
“I do not believe we can be successful in Iraq so long as we have the intended goal of having a permanent footprint in Iraq because I believe the ever-continuous presence of American soldiers on the ground there is one of the primary sources of consternation,” he said.
The congressman said he has asked Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld how long the administration plans to keep military bases in Iraq.
“I was told, ‘We’re really not sure.’ If that is the case, I am not going to support additional funding for the expansion of military bases in Iraq that are going to be under U.S. control. I think that’s part of the problem over there.”
He said he believes “we should take as strong a posture as we can in regard to Iran,” noting that he sponsored resolutions condemning that country’s hostility toward Israel. But, he said, he favors “a multilateral approach, a United Nations-type approach,” to dealing with Iran’s nuclear potential. “My position on that is very clear,” he said.
Asked about voting against federal aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina, Garrett said he supported one $10 billion allocation but opposed a second bill that authorized $53 billion “without a single committee hearing, a debate, a discussion as to where and how this money would be spent.” He bragged that he was one of a handful of members who “stood on principle and voted against it.”
The legislator said he voted against funding stem cell research because, “just like with Katrina, you can only spend a dollar once. So when it comes to cures for disease you want to make sure it goes to the appropriate matters that see the most likelihood of success. There have been zero therapeutic remedies” derived from stem cell research.
In the morning’s most dramatic moment, Sheryl Weisbuch of Oradell, the mother of a 19-year-old autistic son named Jacob, challenged Garrett to explain why he was the only congressman from New Jersey who has not signed on as a sponsor of the Combating Autism Act, a proposal to double National Institutes of Health spending on autism research and to appoint a federal “autism czar.”
“Whether you will see this bill passed is of some moment,” he told her. “But it’s not really as important as making sure the National Institutes of Health get the money to work on it,” he said.
“Bad answer,” she told NJJN. “The reason for the Combating Autism Bill is to organize autism research. There is research all over the place. The Combating Autism Bill would put those researchers in touch with each other.”
The most recent poll, released last month by Aronsohn’s campaign, showed the challenger within 16 points of the incumbent, a respectable showing in a district whose voters have sent Garrett to Washington twice. No poll has been released since a congressional page scandal in Washington put the House’s Republican leadership in an unflattering light.
According to Ingrid Reed, policy analyst and director of the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University, despite the district’s history as a Republican stronghold, Aronsohn “is a viable candidate who has run a very well-organized visible campaign.”
“But if you look at the numbers,” she added, “it is so heavily Republican that Aronsohn is going to need a bigger Democratic voter turnout and conversion of moderate Republicans, and I don’t have a feeling for how his campaign is dealing with that.”
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