When a Tough Question is Deemed Disruptive

Think Progress has the story: More Republican Congressmen Face Town Hall Backlash Over Tax Breaks For Wealthy And Medicare Privatization.

Earlier this week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) held town halls across his district to defend his budget’s plan to end Medicare and extend tax cuts for the wealthy. During a stop in Milton, WI Ryan’s constituents made their feelings apparent, booing down the seven-term congressman when he defended tax breaks for the rich, as Think Progress first reported. Yesterday, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) received the same hostile reception from his constituents for voting to end Medicare.

Here's Ryan during a town hall meeting where he is asked a question about his budget.

During a town hall meeting in Milton, a constituent who described himself as a “lifelong conservative” asked Ryan about the effects of growing income inequality in our nation. The constituent noted that huge income disparities contributed to the Great Depression and the Great Recession, and thus wanted to know why the congressman was “fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire.”

Ryan argued against “redistribut[ing]” in this manner. After the constituent noted that “there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down,” Ryan argued that “we do tax the top.” This response earned a chorus of boos from constituents:

CONSTITUENT: The middle class is disappearing right now. During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire? And we’re fighting to not raise the Social Security cap from $87,000? I think we’re wrong.

RYAN: A couple things. I don’t disagree with the premise of what you’re saying. The question is what’s the best way to do this. Is it to redistribute… (Crosstalk)

CONSTITUENT: You have to lower spending. But it’s a matter of there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.

RYAN: We do tax the top. (Audience boos). Let’s remember, most of our jobs come from successful small businesses. Two-thirds of our jobs do. You got to remember, businesses pay taxes individually. So when you raise their tax rates to 44.8 percent, which is what the president is proposing, I would just fundamentally disagree. That is going to hurt job creation.

WATCH:

This town hall backlash is now spreading to other districts across the country. As Huffington Post reports, freshmen Reps. Robert Dold (R-IL) and Charlie Bass (R-NH) got an earful from their constituents for voting in favor of the Republican budget this month. During a Buffalo Grove, IL town hall, Dold caught a lot of flack for supporting corporate tax breaks and voting to end Medicare:

But Dold couldn’t even get to the end of the presentation before audience members began peppering him with questions about the Ryan budget, named after House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin. It began with audience members telling Dold they don’t believe chopping 10 percentage points off the highest corporate tax rate will create jobs. A handful of people in the audience identified themselves as business owners and accountants who said their effective corporate income tax rate is already lower than the lowest rates proposed in the Ryan plan. They pointed to companies such as GE that pay almost no taxes despite billions in profits as evidence. [...]

Some in the audience then told Dold they don’t like the idea in the Ryan budget plan of Medicare becoming a voucher program that makes senior citizens buy private health insurance about 10 years from now. Audience members said buying private insurance is a shell game where no one really knows what costs a company will cover or to what degree.

Here is Rep. Lou Barletta (R- PA) trying to support his position in support of Ryan's budget while being asked tough questions:

Barletta spokesman Shawn Kelly said that the activist who challenged the Congressman at a town hall, Linda Christman, deliberately set a raucous tone as part of a coordinated effort by Democrats to disrupt the event. Linda Christman merely charged that Rep. Barletta didn't run on changing Medicare but then voted to change the Medicare system.

Christman dismissed the suggestion that she was part of an organized effort.

“I’ve been politically active in this community for a long time and I had heard that Rep. Barletta had voted for the Ryan budget. As far as being part of a larger group, there was only one other person there that I knew.”

She said the group Moveon.org had emailed her and encouraged her to attend.

“I got an email from Moveon.org, saying they were trying to get people to go. I don’t think they were very successful. There were only one or two people there who raised objections.”

Moveon.org did send an email to local activists encouraging them to attend the town hall. However, the email contained no mention of disruption. This was the call to action:

“Late last week, Representative Lou Barletta voted in favor of gutting Medicare and Medicaid. Join us on Wednesday, April 20 to ask the congressman why he voted for a budget that that puts millions of seniors, children, and people with disabilities at risk of losing their health care, so we can give millionaires trillions in tax cuts.”

It makes one wonder who are politicians representing. Do they want a town hall meeting comprised of solely those people who don't question their political positions? Are we at a point where asking questions and supporting a political position is called 'organized' and 'disruptive'?

Senate Women Fighting Back

The government shutdown was averted. A temporary agreement was reached by Democrats and Republicans. But several Senate Democratic women explain that the budget impasse by the Republicans and the Tea Party was not on fiscal issues but on social issues. WATCH:

This agreement will be short lived. It is a temporary fix. The Republicans will continue their fight to reduce health care for women, cut Pell grants, eliminate the EPA, reduce aid to the poor and cause extreme loss of jobs. The Senate women are right when they say that it's not about fiscal responsibility. It's really about fiscal irresponsibility!

Do the Math! A Solution for WI

Do the Math!  Here's one Wisconsin resident's solution to the deficit problem.
 

Geithner Flies Coach

Remember when the big three auto CEO's came to the Congress on their private jets while requesting taxpayer bailout money . Here's a refreshing Change.

CNN reports that the man who was grilled by Congress last week over the AIG bonuses took the Delta shuttle from New York to Washington on Saturday, riding in the coach section. Asked why not first class, Geithner said he always rides coach, "never first class".

Is there a message from the top?

Two weeks ago, Susan Rice, soon after she was confirmed to be President Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, was spotted riding in coach on a morning Delta shuttle from Washington to New York.

"Organizing for America" while Securing Support

Obama was on Jay Leno. He did an interview on 60 Minutes. Now Team Obama is carrying his message all across the 50 states. The GOP's response reiterates the latest talking point that Obama is too far to the left to succeed. But by going to the people, the Obama administration is getting his message directly where it counts. That seems to be not only a novel idea but quite smart. While Obama is telling everyone why they should say 'yes', the Republicans are telling everyone they should just say 'no'.

In a significant first, Organizing for America — Obama’s political operation housed in the DNC — is launching between 1,200 and 1,300 canvassas tomorrow in all 50 states to build support for Obama’s budget, an OFA official confirms.

The number of canvasses, which hasn’t been announced, is more than double what the Obama team expected, the official says. It’s the first time that OFA — a reconfigured version of Obama’s campaign apparatus and email list that’s being pressed into service to drive the White House agenda — will canvass in support of Obama’s legislative goals.

“The canvasses on Saturday, the pledge drive and the calls to Congress are all designed to put our elected officials in Washington on notice that Americans expect that the change President Obama campaigned for becomes reality.” OFA director Mitch Stewart said in a statement emailed to me.

Canvassers will go door-to-door in all 50 states to secure pledges from voters to back Obama’s budget, making this the first major test of whether Team Obama can mount a campaign-style ground operation that can effectively drive Obama’s legislative agenda.

Update: Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for GOP House minority whip Eric Cantor, emails over a response:

“When the DNC has to launch a massive campaign to convince their own moderate Democrats to support the President’s budget, it speaks volumes about how far outside the mainstream this agenda really is. We hope that Republicans and moderate Democrats can convince the Administration to return to the political center so that we can work together on bipartisan solutions to help small businesses and middle class families overcome the economic challenges they face.”

Standing up to Rove

On ABC's This Week, Karl Rove was very critical of President Obama's proposed budget.

He's now going to add more debt in the first 20 months and 11 days than was incurred in 2 wars, 9/11 and the previous administration.

Katrina vanden Heuvel who was on the panel with Rove was refresingly bold as she countered Rove's GOP talking point.

It's laughable for you to talk about fiscal responsibility from someone who helped plunge this nation into trillion dollars of debt through tax cuts for the very rich and a war we never should have fought. Starving the beast, starving the government has been a republican role in terms of government and therefore when George asks why government hasn't functioned, people have not seen the role of government in improving the conditions of their lives in decades.

It is about time that the GOP's critism of the President's budget is being countered with a dose of reality. How refreshing!!!!

Obama Takes A Stand!!!

In President Obama's Radio Address today he told the American people that he campaigned for change and that the staus quo is no more.

I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak.

So what is President Obama's message?

My message to them is this:

So am I.

He's ready for a fight and he won't back down.

The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t. I work for the American people. I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November. That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I’ll be fighting for in the weeks ahead – change that will grow our economy, expand our middle-class, and keep the American Dream alive for all those men and women who have believed in this journey from the day it began.

Yeah Obama!

Read Full Transcript

WATCH:

The Same Spin The Same Lies

Jon Perr has an interesting perspective about Republicans continuing the lie about the effect of Obama letting the Bush tax cuts expire.

In his first budget, President Obama apparently plans to keep his campaign promise to let the Bush tax cuts expire for Americans making over $250,000 a year. And just as during the election, Republican leaders are falsely claiming that Obama's proposal constitutes a tax hike on small business owners. This time, it is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell echoing John McCain and Joe the Plumber in spreading the lie.

McConnell's myth-making came during an appearance Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." There, he fired the first salvo against President Obama's plan to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who need it least. Claiming that "a vast majority of American small businesses pay taxes as individual taxpayers," McConnell thundered:

"I don't think raising taxes is a great idea, and when our good friends on the other side of the aisle say raising the taxes on the wealthy, what they are really talking about is small business." Of course, they're not talking about small business. As CNN concluded in October, "fewer than 2% of small business owners would pay more under Obama's plan.

As it turns out, McConnell is merely parroting the same fraud now that John McCain tried to perpetrate then. Last fall, then Republican presidential candidate McCain attacked Obama, wrongly asserting, "The small businesses that we're talking about would receive an increase in their taxes right now." As it turned out, McCain's human shield and faux small business owner Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher will receive a tax cut, and not an increase, under the just passed Obama stimulus package.

But in case there was any doubt the Republicans' deception on the point, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center quickly put it to rest. As the Obama campaign correctly claimed, 98% would see their taxes decline or remain the same:

Even using the broad definition of small business that McCain likes, very few owners would see their own taxes rise.

That's because the lion's share of taxable income comes from a small number of wealthy businesses. Out of 34.7 million filers with business income on Schedules C, E or F, 479,000 filers fall into the top two brackets, according to an analysis of projected 2009 filings by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The other 34.3 million - or 98.6% - would be unaffected by Obama's proposed rate hike.

Of course, the complete falsehood of a statement is no barrier to Republicans uttering it. Now as in 2001, Republicans wrongly claimed that the estate tax led to the loss of family farms. When President Bush blasted opponents who say "the death tax doesn't cause people to sell their farms" with a mocking "don't know who they're talking to in Iowa," neither Hawkeye State farmers nor researchers could name one. As the New York Times concluded eight years ago, "Almost no working farmers do, according to data from an Internal Revenue Service analysis of 1999 returns that has not yet been published.

But just because it's a lie, doesn't mean Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party won't keep saying it.