APP Editorial: Return Pallone to Washington

Another sound editorial by the Asbury Park Press today endorsing the candidacy of Congressman Frank Pallone and his return to Washington D.C to represent the 6th Congressional District:

Veteran Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. has been a tireless advocate for issues important to the people he has represented in his 6th Congressional District for the past two decades. He has been a staunch supporter of measures to protect the environment, provide affordable health care and preserve the Shore's valuable tourism industry. He deserves re-election to a 12th term in the House of Representatives.

As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, he helped craft the health care reform package. While it didn't go far enough in our view to ensure affordable, quality care for all Americans, many of the reforms, some now in place, were badly needed. Parents may now, for example, include adult children up to the age of 26 on their health insurance policies and pre-existing conditions soon will no longer be a bar to coverage. If re-elected, Pallone says he will concentrate on food and drug safety, strengthening the Medicare and Medicaid programs and improving health insurance coverage.

While the health care debate was front and center this term, Pallone has continued to work on other issues important to Jersey Shore voters. The House passed his Beach Protection Act this year. The legislation requires tough new beach water quality testing and public notification standards so that beachgoers are confident that the waters they are swimming or surfing in are clean.

Pallone also introduced bills to end interstate dumping of medical waste on our beaches and to create a Clean Ocean Zone off the coasts of New Jersey and New York in order to permanently prevent offshore drilling.

Republican opponent Anna Little, a former Monmouth County freeholder and current mayor of Highlands, won the GOP primary as a Tea Party candidate. She would work to repeal the health care reform package and believes all that is needed to put the health care system on the right track is more competition and tort reform.

Little supports replacing all federal taxes with the so-called Fair Tax — a national sales tax of 23 percent, she says. That figure is far lower than other objective estimates. The Fair Tax also is a misnomer. It would be more fair to wealthier Americans. While she is free with her criticism of the Obama administration, the issues portion of her website is largely devoid of specific, concrete policy proposals.

Jack Freudenheim of Plainfield, a technology jobs recruiter who is running as an independent, is a sincere centrist who is not ready for national office.

Faced with the choice between Pallone and Little, voters in the district, which includes all or parts of 28 municipalities in Monmouth County, 10 in Middlesex County and one each in Somerset and Union counties, should opt for the thoughtful, considered positions of Pallone instead of the often strident protestations of Little.