EDITOR,

Rep. Jerry McNerney is pretending to be a fiscal moderate, but the average voter is too disengaged to notice the glaring inconsistency in his positions.

Consider McNerney’s recent vote against increasing the limit on the national debt by $1.9 trillion. His congressional Web site touts the vote as a principled stand against soaring budget deficits.

What it doesn’t say is that McNerney voted for the record spending that makes the huge debt increase necessary in the first place.

McNerney supported the stimulus and voted for health care reform. McNerney’s new legislation that he claims will create jobs through targeted tax credits is a sham. The legislation modifies existing tax code, and for new hires earning less than $40,000, McNerney’s changes actually cut the existing tax credit.

And the measure places further restrictions on who may claim this credit. According to his own Web site, “In order for small businesses to be eligible to receive these credits, one of the criteria they must meet is revenue of $20 million or less or no more than 200 full-time employees, and the workers hired must have received unemployment during the previous year.”