Former governor and U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine says a few simple compromises could help Congress avoid sequestration, a process that would trigger automatic cuts to defense and other spending if a budget deal is not reached before the end of the year.

Kaine outlined the plan in a visit to the Suffolk News-Herald on Wednesday.

Defense contractors in Suffolk are nervously following the news coming out of Washington, which they hope will show signs of improving soon. But if not, the effects on Hampton Roads could be devastating — almost half the Gross Regional Product is attributable to the Department of Defense, ODU economist Gary Wagner said at a Suffolk forum in April.

The first item on the agenda, Kaine said, should be to reach a deal on the expiration of George W. Bush-era tax cuts. The cuts should be allowed to expire for those making more than $500,000 a year, which would create $500 billion in revenue over the course of 10 years.

That alone would close about half the gap needed, Kaine says.

But the plan wouldn’t stop there. Authorizing Medicare to negotiate independently with pharmaceutical companies over prices and reimbursements would save $250 billion, he said. Only $250 billion would be left.

“That’s a very manageable amount to find over 10 years,” he said.

Touting the value of compromise, Kaine blames an “anti-compromise attitude” in both parties for the deadlocked situation in Congress and says he has the skills to help fix it.

“Both parties have been complicit, and that means both parties have a responsibility to fix it,” he said.

“It’s like a traffic intersection where none of the lights work,” he added. “The supercommittee should have found an answer. They didn’t even put a plan on the table. Congress has a hard time making a hard decision, and they don’t want to work together.”

While on the City Council in Richmond, his peers chose him to be mayor because “I was a good listener and umpire,” he said. “I could get all the ideas on the table and find common ground.”

In decades and centuries past, it was a political compliment to be called a compromiser, Kaine pointed out. But the term has taken on negative connotations in Washington. Politicians who seek compromise are seen as “weak on principle” and unwilling to “stand tough,” Kaine said.

He also spoke briefly to regional transportation issues during his visit. He said he supports tolls but also supports public investment in tolled projects to bring the cost down.

A private group plans to begin tolling the Downtown and Midtown tunnels between Norfolk and Portsmouth in 2014 in exchange for improvements made to them. The deal was reached through the Public-Private Transportation Act, which Kaine supports.

The improvements will help bring investment from the port and the military, he said. But the entire state needs to get involved with raising revenues to pay for the projects, he said.