Pointing to his "independent voice" in Washington and leadership role on issues that affect the state and country, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey made a case for his re-election on Monday.
The Scranton Democrat told The Times-Tribune editorial board that one of the biggest differences between him and his Republican opponent, Tom Smith, is his ability to work to get things done rather than addressing an issue with an unwillingness to compromise.
"The last thing we need down in Washington is more hyper-partisanship, more ideology, more 'no compromise' instead of the efforts that some of us have made to bring people together," Mr. Casey said, referring to Mr. Smith. "The worst thing we could do right now is to take a turn into a more partisan, more ideological direction."
The senator's re-election campaign has centered on pinning the Tea Party label on Mr. Smith, who founded a Tea Party chapter in Armstrong County and has criticized Mr. Casey for following President Barack Obama's agenda too closely.
Mr. Casey touted his leadership on the payroll tax cut, which trimmed the employee share of the tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent, as a way of stimulating the economy, saying it led to more job growth. The tax cut passed over the objections of members of Congress aligned with the Tea Party.
Mr. Casey did not rule out extending the cut again, but said Congress' priority after the election must be to find an agreement that will prevent automatic across-the-board spending cuts that could harm valuable federal programs.
With Mr. Casey's support, Congress passed the spending cuts last year as part of a deficit-reduction deal that allowed for an increase in the nation's debt ceiling.
Mr. Casey said he believes even conservatives in Congress are fed up with the Tea Party influence in Congress and are willing to come up with an agreement that balances spending cuts and tax increases.
"I'm reasonably confident that can happen," he said. "There are plenty of conservative Republican senators that understand that you've got to get folks together on these things."
Whatever the solution is, the emphasis should be on helping the middle class, he said.
"We've still got to get folks together on the question of how you keep the economy moving," Mr. Casey said.
He blamed the Tea Party members in Congress with blocking progress on a highway/transportation bill and a farm bill.
"I think we'd be creating a lot more jobs right now were it not for blocking of those seemingly bipartisan efforts that (are in) their agenda," Mr. Casey said. "I mean this is no-compromise, scorched-earth agenda. Republicans have never seen this. That's why some of them in the Congress are losing their patience with the Tea Party."
Mr. Casey said he's also done his best to obtain money for local projects. He pointed to millions of dollars for dredging the Delaware River to allow for expansion of the Port of Philadelphia; his push to keep tank parts production at the General Dynamics plant in Archbald; and his lobbying of Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to find $2.9 million for a proposed downtown transportation center when previous federal funding for that project was taken away.
Mr. Casey, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized Republicans for politicizing the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in a Sept. 11 anniversary terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
"What we should be doing as a country, not just Democrats and Republicans, we should be focused on hunting down the terrorists that did this and killing them or ... bringing them to justice. ... I think we should be focusing on getting the bad guys, providing every measure of security, completing a thorough investigation to find out what happened and then let the chips fall where they may."
If someone in the State Department or the Obama administration "didn't do their job," they should be punished. The same politicization of foreign policy is happening in the debate over Iran and its quest for nuclear weapons, he said.
"You can have a debate about Iran, but to try to put people in different camps that 'If you don't agree with me on this part of the foreign policy, you are somehow weak' or you are alleging that people misled intentionally (on the Libyan attack) without the evidence to back it up harms our foreign policy," he said. "Now, do I think the administration handled this (the Libya attack) well? No, they didn't. They did a really bad job of communicating on this and ... getting their facts together before the messages went out. But let's let the investigation proceed and reach a determination instead of jumping the gun and pointing fingers in the middle of an election year."
Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@ timesshamrock.com