Jon Runyan, heading to Congress, plans to focus on reducing spending

Jon Runyan got to know the radio preset buttons on his GMC Yukon pretty well as he trekked 25,000 miles back and forth across the sprawling Third Congressional District he will represent in Washington come January.

"You wear those buttons out, those presets. You go from talk radio, talk radio, back to music," said Runyan, a former Eagles tackle.

"I like the newer radios better. You don't have to switch the bands," said the 36-year-old Republican. "Some of those things you don't think about until you're spending eight months in a car."

Now, Runyan gets to spend two years in the U.S. House of Representatives in a political environment where it seems as if nothing is preset.

In an interview Friday about what he hopes to accomplish in Congress, Runyan said he intended to provide strong constituent service and concentrate on reducing government spending. He would like seats on the Armed Services and Natural Resources Committees, he said.

He said he wasn't sure if he would rent a place in Washington or stay with his wife's cousin in Bethesda, Md. But, he said, during his 14-year football career, his family became used to him being away from home.

Of the more than 90 new House members, Runyan is one of 30 who has never held elected office. His victory over freshman Democrat John Adler was part of a red wave that swept 84 new Republicans into the House, flipping control to the GOP and positioning Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio to become speaker.

Many candidates in the midterm elections took aim at government spending. Part of the 112th Congress' agenda was set this week with the release of draft proposals from the cochairmen of President Obama's bipartisan debt-reduction commission.

Among their recommendations, which have not been approved by the full commission, are to eliminate income tax deductions for dependent children, mortgage interest, and state and local taxes.

Runyan opposes eliminating the deductions and disagrees with the proposal to reduce personal and corporate income taxes.

"They're nitpicking," he said of the cochairmen's findings. "Leave the tax code where we're at, the current rates where we're at right now, and work on the spending problem."

He also rejects the proposal to raise fees for Medicare recipients and suggests that government focus on "waste and abuse and fraud" in the program.

And, he opposes raising the Social Security retirement age for those now in the workforce.

"We cannot change the rules of the game with the people who are in it," Runyan said.

If he is seated on the military-affairs committee, Runyan said, he will take his lead from the armed forces. He disagrees with the president's deadline of Dec. 31, 2011, to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq, saying that he wants military leaders first to decide if the mission has been accomplished.

He also opposes moving detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the U.S. mainland.

"You've spent a lot of money on that facility," he said. "Do you want to have them in your backyard? . . . I don't see an advantage of moving them here, and quite frankly, I don't think a lot of people want them here."

Runyan is among the Republicans who have said they would like to repeal Obama's health-care overhaul.

"If that bill was such a great piece of legislation, why did they have to do all the favors to all the people to get them to sign on?" he said Friday. "Why does it have to be thousands of pages long? A really good piece of legislation doesn't need to have that aspect tied onto it."

If the Senate doesn't pass legislation to raise safety standards and corporate liability limits for offshore oil drillers, Runyan could help shape energy policy as a potential member of the Natural Resources Committee. The legislation the panel considers requires a "delicate balance," he said.

"You're talking about the environment, but you're also talking about a billion-trillion-dollar industry," Runyan said. "Life is risk, reward, competition."

At the same time, "you can't have the taxpayer on the hook for all that stuff. It was unfortunate we went through that situation in the gulf," he said, referring to the April explosion on a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people and spewed millions of gallons of oil. "I think it's opened people's eyes up to what you have to address."

Runyan is in favor of drilling for oil off the New Jersey coast, something that Gov. Christie, his campaign helpmate, opposes.

When he is seated in January, Runyan will be among the youngest members of Congress. According to a Congressional Quarterly analysis of the freshman class, only 27 are under age 40. The average age for a member is 56, 20 years older than the Mount Laurel resident.

Runyan will need his vigor. The survival rate of freshman House members is poor. Fifty-one House incumbents lost in the general election, and 24, including Runyan's Democratic opponent, were freshmen.

He is "vulnerable in a district that has swung back and forth in the past few years," said Sharon Schulman, director of the Hughes Center for Public Policy at Richard Stockton College.

"Whether he's going to be able to accomplish anything in two years is going to make a difference," Schulman said. "Who's running against Obama is going to make a difference."

Because states are redrawing House district boundaries, he also could find himself running in a significantly changed House district in 2012.

In the meantime, Runyan said, he intends to follow the best advice he received from people congratulating him on his victory.

Runyan said they told him: "Be who you are. Don't let the process change you. . . . You're not going to make everybody happy."

It's like when he played football, he said: "If you're consistent and people know what to expect from you, they're able to deal with it, and I think that goes a long way."