SHAMOKIN - There was tremendous relief when the political stalemate ended on Dec. 17 and Congress voted to extend for two months a Social Security payroll tax break that keeps 2 percent more in the average American's paycheck.
But Feb. 29 will be here soon, and when it nears, "We're going to go through it all again," U.S. Rep. Tom Marino (R-10) said of the political posturing and party-line battle.
"This is a notorious, standard operating procedure for Washington D.C.: Let's delay it, delay it, delay it, for numerous reasons and on both sides of the aisle," he said.
Marino, who recently completed his freshman year in Congress, addressed the tax-break extension, the new "attitude" of his freshmen congressional class and other issues during an editorial board session at The News-Item on Friday.
Marino, whose 10th Congressional District currently includes all of Northumberland County, won't represent much of the county when the recently approved redistricting plan takes effect in 2013, should he win re-election this year. Portions of the county, mostly from Sunbury south and east, will become part of the 11th district, currently represented by Lou Barletta.
Make it permanent
Marino was happy to see the tax-break extension, meaning an extra $1,000 a year for those making $50,000 a year in wages, but says it comes with a caveat.
"A year ago December, when this tax break was put into effect by this administration, they had no way to pay for it, so it went straight onto the debt," Marino said. "There were ways to do it for it not to go onto the debt."
He said he isn't satisfied with the short-term fix, despite the perception that Republicans were voting against the cut.
"My argument is that I don't want to extend it for two months, I don't want to extend it for a year. I want to make it permanent," Marino said.
In order to do that, he said the government needs to find a way to pay for the cuts. For that, and many other financial considerations in Washington, the first step is to balance the federal budget - another process that needs to be permanent, he said.
"We need to have a balanced budget amendment. Congress, over the past 60 years, has passed laws to balance the budget; but, when it's inconvenient for Congress, they pass a law to waive it," he said. "If it becomes an amendment to the Constitution, it has to be executed. If not, I think we can be impeached because we are not fulfilling our responsibilities, according to the Constitution."
The U.S. House last pushed for the amendment in the summer, making a bargain to bring it to the floor when a vote was needed to raise the debt ceiling.
"We said that we were going to vote no on the legislation, unless you put a balanced-budget amendment on the table," Marino said.
The bill failed in November when lawmakers were 23 votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed to pass it to move to the Senate.
Starting with a balanced budget is the only way to work toward reserving what is a national debt that has grown $5.5 trillion dollars in the last four years, Marino believes. That involves making cuts and downsizing Washington, and then cutting taxes.
"That doesn't mean that everything is not on the table," he stressed. "Somebody can't come in and say, 'We're not going to raise taxes on the wealthy,' or say, 'We're not going to touch Social Security.' Everything has to be on the table, and in order for this to work fairly, everyone of us are going to have to feel the pain."
Downsize by attrition
Marino said Washington can begin its down-sizing through attrition.
"There are tens of thousands of people a year retiring from the federal government, or passing away, or getting fired, or taking another position. We cannot fill those positions with the exception of, in my opinion, law enforcement and the military," he said.
Marino said the departments of energy and education aren't needed at the federal level.
"The Department of Energy was created to make us oil independent, but today we are getting 51 percent of our oil from outside the country," he said, saying it was only 25 percent when the department was formed in 1977.
"We haven't developed solar power. We haven't developed wind power and we weren't allowed to build any nuclear power plants for decades. This administration is trying to shut down not only the usage of coal, but any fossil fuel, and we are not ready for it," Marino said.
On education, Marino described his position this way: "Let's eliminate the administration and pass those funds down to the state and to the locals, who best know how to handle the education system in their area, and make sure the state has a standard to follow."
'Attitude' in D.C.
Marino is confident some cost-cutting ideas will be looked at in the near future with the help of the 87 Republican and 10 Democratic newcomers who entered the House and Senate in 2010.
"We have a little bit of an attitude about us. We know why we were sent to D.C. and we are trying to implement these programs, but the Republican House is only one-third of the controlling government right now. We have the president and Harry Reid (Senate majority leader) against us," Marino said.
The congressman said that there are currently 24 pieces of legislation on Reid's desk that address cutting spending, downsizing and getting rid of legislation that is hurting small and medium-size businesses, but Reid will not bring them to the Senate floor for a vote, Marino charges.
Reid's Washington press office was contacted Monday afternoon for a response, but it was not available by press time.
While Marino sounds particularly partisan, he was critical of his own party, too, in its efforts to make any real change.
"In the '90s, Republicans had control of the House, Senate and the presidency, and they blew it," Marino said about efforts to change the way government money is used. "The spending continued, and we didn't take advantage of the surplus that we spent in the blink of an eye."
However, Marino said progress is being made.
"In this Congress, we have cut more discretionary spending than any other Congress in history," he said.
That amount is only in the billions, he admits, and the current national debt is $15 trillion.
"There will be more cuts in 2012 than 2011, and we could have even more, but the Senate will not vote on it," he said. "We have prevented a great deal of legislation that would have caused us even more problems and more debt from being enacted into law."