Shades of the Palm Bach recount...

Nice to see the GOP's gassing up their "grassroots" buses again...
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DEMOCRATIC HOUSE MEMBERS HOLD A NEWS CONFERENCE ON THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY TOWN HALL MEETINGS

1 March 2005
Political Transcripts by Federal Document Clearing House

[...] MILLER: I'm Brad Miller. I represent the 13th district of North Carolina, which is about two-thirds what we in North Carolina think of as urban, Rally and Greensboro, and about one-third rural, small-town North Carolina.

I love my district. But as I'm hearing my colleagues today, I really am tempted to trade districts with someone, if I could.

I had a somewhat different experience. President Bush came to North Carolina a month or so ago, to my district, had a town hall meeting that consisted entirely of an audience screened, that was Republican Party activists, people who were of the same mind, who were reverent of his every word.

David Price and I decided that we would do it differently, that since our nation was working so hard to spread democracy around the world, that we would try democracy here.

We had a town hall meeting that we did not screen folks. We had people who were bused in from all over the state. They were told to get there an hour early and take every available seat. And we faced a roomful of 150 or 200 entirely hostile folks and crowded out the people who would have come just at random to hear the discussion of Social Security.

[...] We are debating in very vague terms. We don't have a plan. President Bush said in the State of the Union debate he wanted to have a thoughtful, honest debate about Social Security. Let's have it. Let's get started. I'm ready. Where's the plan? When can we talk?

Mr. Clyburn mentioned that the one person from his district who favored the plan was his likely opponent in the next election, who thought it would be like the congressional thrift plan. And when Mr. Clyburn explained that, no, we also pay Social Security taxes and it's in addition to that -- and we would love to have some kind of savings in addition to Social Security while protecting Social Security.

I got confronted with the same argument yesterday. I explained that, well, members of Congress do in fact pay Social Security and the thrift plan is on top of that. The leader of the group that had come in opposition called me a liar, loudly, publicly.