So I was sitting in my front room catching up on my reading and I get a phone call to take part in a Town Hall with my House Representative(Jeff Fortenberry-Rep, 1st district,Nebraska). Except for the city of Lincoln, this is a pretty conservative district-the last time it went Democratic was 1964. I say this because these weren't liberals storming a town hall: we were called and am guessing it was just people on landlines. So I thought it would be interesting to see what people had to say about recent events. And I signed up to ask one too.
Boy, did he get an earful.
The first caller was really upset after hearing Obama said if there was no deal, Social Security checks wouldn't go out. This affected both sets of her in-laws and both were panicked-one set of them planning to move in with her and her husband. She wanted something done immediately. People needed to compromise.
Caller two was worried about his stocks and bonds tanking and said Republicans weren't voted in to screw with people and not make deals.
Next caller talked about how Republicans never seemed to be willing to work with the other side and pointed out that Ben Nelson(borderline Democrat) voted for Republican stuff many times(way too many IMO) and why couldn't the Republicans stand up to their party poobahs.
To his credit, Representative Fortenberry didn't directly criticize Obama-just kept saying he hoped something could be worked out and his preference would be to cut spending. He tried to reassure people that he didn't think it would come to Social Security checks not going out. He said he was sorry "that" even went out....sure he was pissed about Obama even answering the CBS question.
Next caller sounded quasi-tea bagger. He said we spend a ton of money protecting the Korean border, why couldn't we protect ours. Don't know if the dude meant the US border or Nebraska's which last time I checked wasn't under any kind of threat. Then he said federal salaries should be sacrificed first and not SS benefits. Not sure how the benefits would go out if federal employee were furloughed.
Back to more questions about Social Security and Medicare....everyone seems to know about this which you wouldn't guess since these were random calls. I was on over a half hour and he still didn't get to my question-which was "When are the Republicans going to introduce a jobs bill?" And I would have complained about Social Security too.
If my rep is getting that kind of reaction from people called during their dinner hour, I'm wondering what people in less conservative districts are hearing.
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