Town halls: Congress should face the music
Amajor national story in recent days has concerned Republican Congress members facing (or trying to avoid) angry crowds in their districts upset about the possibility of losing their health insurance if the GOP-controlled Congress and Republican President Donald Trump make good on their promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“Republicans elected amid rowdy tea party town hall meetings now avoiding their own,” was a headline in The Denver Post last week. “Anger Rises Across The Country At GOP Congressional Town Halls,” screamed a headline on the National Public Radio website. “Angry constituents have confronted legislators at town halls across the country, upset over everything from the GOP’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, the Trump White House’s travel ban, alleged Russian interference in the U.S. elections and more,” the story said.
“… The backlash is happening in some deep red places, stretching from [Tom] Reed’s western New York district to Kentucky and Iowa.” The Des Moines Register reported “Sen. Chuck Grassley’s [R-Iowa] first town hall of the congressional break was a raucous, sweaty tumult of cheering and jeering, interruptions and shouted questions.”
These stories point out the similarities between the current wave of town hall protests and that long hot summer of 2009. That’s when Democratic members of Congress faced tumultuous cheering and jeering across this land as supporters of the newborn tea party movement went on the attack over Democrats’ health care proposals.
New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, who had just been elected to the Senate, survived a standing-room-only town hall meeting at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Albuquerque in late June 2009. That meeting was disrupted by hecklers upset about health care reform and other issues.
“It got pretty rowdy,” a Udall spokeswoman told me afterward. Udall himself downplayed the unpleasantness. “This is what democracy’s all about,” he later told the Albuquerque Journal. “I had the opportunity to hear a lot of New Mexicans’ views on a variety of issues, and I really appreciate that so many came out. They obviously care a lot about the issues we discussed today and listening to their concerns helps me do my job in Washington.”
U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, then a freshman in Congress, originally didn’t plan to face the folks back in the summer of 2009. “Rep. Luján is always very interested in hearing from his constituents, and — in addition to the many public events he’s hosted thus far, we are planning a teletown hall where constituents from across the district can join him on the phone,” a spokesman said in an email in August 2009. “Because of the size of the district, a tele-town hall will allow constituents from across the district to participate.”
Presumably with a straight face, the spokesman claimed that the disruptions at other congressional town hall meetings had nothing to do with the decision not to do an in-person town hall. Shortly after that statement, Luján relented. He held a public forum at the Unitarian Universalist church in Santa Fe, where about 200 people filled the seats. So many people were turned away that Luján agreed to do a second forum that night, which reportedly drew about 175 more people.
I covered the earlier forum for The New Mexican. Unlike the crazy town hall scenes I had seen on television that summer, Luján’s event remained relatively sedate. The congressman was one of several panelists there. Instead of people directly addressing Luján and the others, they had to write their questions on cards to be read by a moderator.
This is liberal Santa Fe, of course, so it’s not surprising that the event didn’t turn into an angry free-for-all. But there were some moments of tension. When Luján quoted the Congressional Budget Office that the health care bill would create a $6 billion surplus, one audience member said loudly, “That’s a lie!” That was as harsh as it got. Like Udall’s reaction in 2009, some Republicans who have faced angry crowds in recent days — the ones who aren’t scurrying away like scared puppies — have displayed a positive attitude. “I don’t mind boisterousness. I’m having fun,” said Virginia Congressman Dave Brat last week after what sounded like a hellish public appearance.
I don’t know how much “fun” Brat actually had. But I believe that it’s far healthier for public servants to face the music in person — even when most of the notes are sour.