Our local representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives, Thomas A. Marino, a Cogan Station Republican, and Glenn Thompson, a Howard Republican, count for just two of 435 House members.
And they aren't asked to spin for their party regarding the looming fiscal cliff on one of those 24-hour news channels on TV.
That's too bad.
Because when the Sun-Gazette asked for their views on the issue, they were hardly the immovable demagogues that Republicans are accused of being.
Thompson, for instance, wants the country's military to remain the strongest in the world, but he concedes, "I know there are areas of wasteful spending we can cut." He wants no sacred cows when it comes to spending cuts needed to cut the federal debt from the gargantuan $16 trillion it sits at right now.
Marino is completely on board with the need to raise revenue with at least changes in the tax code as part of the fiscal cliff remedy. He just wants people on the other side of the aisle to honor the need for spending cuts.
He thinks spending cuts along with tax code changes could solve the problem.
But problems have to be attacked, not shunted aside to worsen the impact later, according to both men. Changes in Medicare/Social Security/Medicaid have to be on the table, since those programs make up 60 percent of the budget, Thompson pointed out.
And increasing tax rates on people making more than $250,000 will hurt the small business people who populate that income bracket, stifling future employment, he said.
This all sounds reasonable to us change the tax code, look at all areas regarding spending cuts, with some focus on the big ticket items.
The fact that some powerbrokers in Washington portray this as radical conservatism merely proves that Washington does have an addiction to spending that must be rehabbed as part of the fiscal cliff solution.
If the end product of this quandary is simple to feed the Obama administration and Congress more revenue so they can increase spending, we will simply be trading tomorrow's problems for an even greater crisis in the near future. That's not how this country has solved problems in the past and not how they should be solved now.
