NEPTUNE - Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., and his Democratic rival, Andy Kim, clashed over health care, taxes, truthfulness and President Donald Trump in a wide-ranging debate before the editorial board of the Asbury Park Press on Thursday.

Toms River resident MacArthur, who is seeking his third term in the House of Representatives, has been the New Jersey's delegation's staunchest supporter of Trump's legislative priorities. Kim, a former national security adviser in President Barack Obama's administration, is making his first bid for elective office.

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The 3rd District includes most of Burlington County and 17 towns in Ocean County, including Toms River, Brick and Berkeley. It's attracted national attention as a potential pickup opportunity for Democrats, who need to flip 24 seats to take control of the House.

Polling has shown a close race.

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"The district, I think, suits me," MacArthur said, noting he has cultivated relationships with both Democrats and Republicans during his four years in Congress.

He noted that he had worked with both parties to lobby the Air Force to bring 24 KC-46 refueling tanker planes to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, helping to protect thousands of jobs at the base. "I have genuine relationships with Democrats as well as Republicans."

Kim said residents of the 3rd District have complained about MacArthur's vote in favor of the tax reform bill, which capped state and local tax deductions at $10,000.

"The focus of this bill is that it was geared toward the wealthiest Americans and corporations," Kim said. "When I talk to voters, they are concerned about this."

While registered Democrats slightly outnumber registered Republicans in the 3rd District, only one Democrat has held the seat in the past 100 years: John Adler, who won by a small margin in 2008, when Obama topped the Democratic ticket.

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Voters in the district supported Obama in 2008 and 2012, but in 2016, the district went to Trump.

MacArthur was the only New Jersey congressman to vote in favor of the sweeping tax reform bill approved last year, and joined retiring Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., as the only members of the state's delegation to support the Affordable Care Act repeal bill that passed the House last year, before it failed in the Senate.

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A report on FiveThirtyEight.com shows MacArthur voted in line with Trump's positions on issues more than 94 percent of the time.

Trump's approval ratings are underwater in New Jersey, with approval ratings of 41 to 42 percent in recent polls, and voter disapproval with the president at more than 50 percent.

Kim has tried to tie MacArthur closely to the president, while MacArthur says he remains a pragmatic legislator who is willing to work across the aisle to pass legislation. MacArthur has cited his high ranking on a list of bipartisan legislators created by the the Lugar Center, a public policy group headed by former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and by Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy.

"Some of the tweets make me cringe, and I wish he wouldn't send them," MacArthur said of Trump. But he said he believes Trump has been good for the country.

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"We have a president who does not turn up his nose at business," he said.

Kim said MacArthur has a "constitutional responsibility to be a check and balance" on the administration, but has not been so far.

MacArthur has attempted to paint Kim as a radical leftist whose policies are too extreme for the 3rd District. The candidates have accused each other of issuing inaccurate mailers and engaging in unfair — and untrue — attacks.

Watch the video above to see MacArthur and Kim respond to questions about various attack ads put out by their campaigns.

The 3rd District includes many reliably Republican towns in Ocean County, which gave Trump a more than 90,000-vote margin over rival Hillary Clinton in 2016. Burlington County supported Clinton by more than 30,000 votes.

Here are how the candidates stand on taxes and health care:

Tax reform

MacArthur, a former insurance executive, defended his vote in favor of the tax bill, which he said has paid economic dividends.

Consumer confidence is increasing, and the unemployment rate is at 3.7 percent, the lowest since 1969, he said.

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"I think people need to keep more of their own money and invest it the way they see fit, it's been proven out," MacArthur said. He said 81 percent of New Jersey residents have received a tax cut under the bill, and very few people in his district are impacted by the $10,000 cap on state and local property deductions.

MacArthur noted that the initial tax bill contained no allowance for state and local tax deductions; he fought to get the $10,000 amount.

"We got $10,000 restored," MacArthur said. "$10,000 is enough for the vast majority of people in this district."

The tax reform bill remains unpopular: more Americans dislike the bill than approve of it. An analysis by the Tax Policy Center finds 82.8 percent of the tax bill's benefits would go to wealthiest 1 percent of Americans by 2027.

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"With the tax bill, the only thing that was bipartisan about that was the bipartisan opposition here in New Jersey to that tax bill that is going to make it harder for Americans here to deduct their state and local taxes," Kim said.

New Jersey only gets back 76 cents of every dollar it sends to the federal government, Kim noted.

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"I feel like that was a line that was crossed, and that was a line that 11 other members of Congress from New Jersey felt like it couldn't be something they could agree to," Kim said. He said the tax bill "was focused on major, permanent tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans on the backs of middle class family here in New Jersey."

Health care

Kim said the Affordable Care Act repeal that MacArthur championed would have allowed insurance rates for those with pre-existing conditions to soar.

He said groups like AARP and the American Medical Association had fought strongly against the repeal bill, "and a number of other highly credible organizations were saying it was certainly going to have the ability to raise prices beyond the level that people can afford."

MacArthur said that an amendment to the ACA repeal bill that he had authored explicitly prohibited states from denying anyone insurance because of a pre-existing condition, and created a $138 billion fund so-called "high risk pools," to help defray costs for sick people who might otherwise find insurance unaffordable.

"First you've got to step back; the whole health care system is broken, the costs are eating us alive, it's 20 percent of the economy," MacArthur said. "I have worked with members on both sides to try to fix a broken health care system."

Kim noted that health care experts did not consider $138 billion to be enough to cover all the people with pre-existing conditions who were likely to need subsidies to purchase insurance.

Jean Mikle: 732-643-4050, @jeanmikle, jmikle@gannettnj.com