Debating In The Fall

Today, Chris Hackett challenged Chris Carney to a series of eight debates over the coming months.

After experiencing some frustration in trying to schedule the debates, Hackett declared, “I know the congressman is busy, but I would think he’d be able to find a little time to debate the critical issues facing our country before the people of our district. We’ve been looking for Chris Carney for weeks to talk about debates, but he doesn’t seem interested. Hopefully, he will hear enough from voters that he’ll change his mind and agree to debates. We have major differences on key issues, and the voters deserve a full hearing of them.”

It seems the proposed debates are structured similar to what Lou Barletta challenged Paul Kanjorski with.

The eight debates would be broken down into two subsections. Three televised (WNEP, WVIA, and WBRE/WYOU) debates in a traditional 30 to 60 second answer format and five more specialized debates focused on individual issues (energy; tax and spending; the economy and jobs; Social Security, Medicare and Health Care; and National Security and immigration).

If Carney agrees to the debates, it will be particularly interesting how he attacks the forum focused on National Security and immigration. The event would likely center on Iraq (which isn't a particularly strong issue for Republicans), but it could score some unlikely points for Hackett because it would allow him to detail some of the changes in Chris Carney since his election in 2006.

Back in 2006 when he first debated Don Sherwood, Carney attacked Sherwood on the issue of Iraq, and it was one area where Carney could distance himself from the incumbent. At their first debate in October, Carney criticized Congress for throwing money around with no end in sight. Furthermore, Carney argued that Congress should not be a “legislative arm” of the Executive Branch and rubber stamp everything that deals with the war.

Two years later, Carney appears to have adopted more of the Sherwood view on the war in that he's voted to fund the war the same way Sherwood voted to fund the war and supported the executive's authority on Iraq. His website proclaims he's proud of his vote for funding the war with no preconditions ("I am proud to say I voted in favor H.R. 2764, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008. This bill provided $70 billion for our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan").

As fiscally conservative as Carney originally seemed in 2006 with war funding, he has also voted to support stuffing other non-emergency measures into the war supplemental bill. The most recent package totaled $162 billion and included the additions of a deficit financed extension of unemployment benefits and the creation of a whole new entitlement program. As Brian Riedl from the Heritage Foundation stated, "Once again, Congress and President Bush have turned legislation intended to fund American troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan into a Christmas tree for domestic spending. Because the troop funding bill (H.R. 2642, now Public Law 110-252) was an 'emergency' bill—and therefore exempt from budget constraints—lawmakers added nearly $100 billion in domestic spending without offsetting the cost by a single dollar."

If for nothing else, Carney should accept the debate framework so he can reconcile his statements in 2006 with his actions during the last two-years of elected office.