Town Hall Rage: Hype or Reality?
It's easy to get lost in the 'Town Hall Descends into Mayhem' narrative - after all, it's one of the few interesting stories that can be written over a long recess.
But as freshmen Congressmen prepare to return from a two week tour of their districts, it's important also to take a look at the town halls that didn't devolve into chaos. One such case? Rep. Todd Young's (IN-09) town halls.
Over the last week, Young has held four town halls, which according to his office varied in size between 20 to 125 attendees. None have degenerated into chants of 1920s protest songs, like in Rep. Richard Hanna's (NY-24) district; nor was there an arrest, as in Rep. Allen West's district; nor heckling and bedlam such as we saw in Rep. Lou Barletta (PA-11) or Daniel Webster's (FL-08)'s districts.
Instead, Young's town halls have involved respectable discussions and civilized questioning. A report from the local paper in Columbus, Indiana covers (paywall) one such town hall:
Though audience members ranged in age from their 30s to their 80s, none of the questions touched on the proposed Medicare or Medicaid changes. Rather, the questions dealt with leadership, the federal government’s bailout of the banking industry, the debt ceiling and whether federal agency czars would keep their jobs under the proposed budget.
No arrests. No heckling. No protests. Nor is this district - Indiana's 9th - a particularly Republican district. In fact, it's a swing district that is scored R+6 and was represented by a Democrat in the previous two cycles, from 2007 to 2011.
So why, with a significant amount of discontent emerging across the country in town halls, are Young's meetings different? For one, Young's meetings are substantial - he took the time to dig into the minutiae of the budget proposal he recently voted on. Again, from the Columbus Republic:
Young, Indiana’s 9th District representative, spent 45 minutes presenting a House Republican Conference slideshow designed to explain the need for bold and aggressive changes...Young said 62 percent of the country’s 2010 budget pays for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That percentage is projected to increase to 76 percent by 2040, he said.
Young's office tells FrumForum that because the Congressman is on the Budget Committee, his constituents have not been taken aback by the Ryan budget proposal - Young's been talking about it for ages.
"As a member of the budget committee, we’ve been talking about this in our district longer than other folks and [Congressman Young] may know how to answer the questions better," said Trevor Foughty, Young's Communications Director, told FF. "They are more open to what we have to say when they really understand what we're trying to do."
But beyond that, it appears that Young's constituents - at least the ones that show up at his meetings - are made of different stock. Indeed, according to interviews conducted by the Columbus Republic, they appear more willing than constituents in other districts to pay a price for the reform of entitlement programs.
Dennis Carmichael, a Seymour City Council member, said he’d be willing to pay more for health care.
'I don’t want to pay more. But will I sacrifice so that my kids can still have the same opportunities with some of the social service programs like Social Security? Absolutely,' Carmichael said.
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