August 06, 2011 03:02 PM UTC

Town Hall with Tipton

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• by: FrenchFinn

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Scott Tipton was in town for a Town Hall meeting yesterday. The room was packed, but it wasn’t all Republicans. I received E-mails from the Mesa County Democratic Party, MoveOn, and ColoradoWINS asking that people from the left attend so that there might be other voices in Tipton’s head when he’s voting in Washington. I saw lots of friends in the room.

Kudos to the organizers of the event. They tried to be fair about questions from the audience by giving everyone a theatre-style ticket as they arrived. The order of the questions, and the questioners were pulled from a hat. I gave my ticket to a ColoradoWINS member, because I wanted to know what questions the union had for Tipton-I thought I’d give unions an extra chance of being picked to ask a question. Obviously other people had the same idea because he had to hold the tickets like a hand of cards to see if he had a winning number. The odds were against him. He was not called to ask a question.

Karl Castleton, Co-Chair of the Mesa County Democrats did hold a winning ticket. His question was about the future of Social Security and Medicare for a guy like him-in his 40’s, paid into Social Security for 20 years, but wouldn’t get any of it under the Ryan plan and other “fix entitlement” schemes. I never really heard Tipton answer the question. Instead he did his level best to make it known that constituents of all persuasions were welcome to speak–Republicans had an opportunity to demonstrate that they embrace the Constitutional guarantee of free speech. He then moved into a rant about how the Republicans in the House keep passing bills, but the evil Democrats in the Senate refuse to rubber stamp them. Damn obstructionist Democrats in the Senate haven’t even passed a budget, why don’t the Senators put their budget out there.  

That’s just one example of the spin presented as truth in this meeting with constituents. The budgeting process starts by the President presenting a budget to the House. President Obama did that. The House then decides if it is the will of the people to enact that budget. The House is controlled by a party whose Senate leader publicly said that his only goal in life is to make Obama a one term President. It isn’t very likely that anything the President wants is going to get to the Senate, let alone escape a McConnell organized filibuster. And with compromise out of the question, we are at another stalemate. Expect fireworks in both houses come September when the next fiscal year is only days away, and government is about to shut down. Again.

I’ve heard the Republican talking point about there not being a Senate budget so many times that even I’m tempted to believe it. But it is spin, and not fact. The process used to get a budget passed in both houses is messy, but there is a budget for this fiscal year that has been blessed by both houses, placed on Obama’s desk, and signed into law. The Senate has not gone 800 days without passing a budget bill. The only truth in that talking point is that no bill regarding a budget for 2012 has become law. That’s what this congress should be, and is working on.

One of the biggest lies told yesterday was spin about “Obamacare.” When a constituent asked if it would be repealed, Tipton replied that the House had repealed it, but the evil Democrats in the Senate refuse to rubber stamp the repeal and Obama promised to veto it. To Tipton’s credit he did make a point of saying it is a law of the land, which it is. It passed two houses and then got a presidential signature. That makes it the law of the land.

After that Tipton went on to promise he will protect Medicare and Social Security for seniors-which, considering his actual votes, makes Tipton either a liar or ignorant. No bill that has been carried by the Republicans in the House has done anything to protect Social Security and Medicare. In fact, the Ryan Bill destroys Medicare while it blows up the budget in future years. Seriously, that’s what the OMB says about the bill. I was gratified to hear Tipton explaining how the OMB is non-partisan and works to give facts to both sides of the political aisle. The Ryan bill destroys Medicare and blows up the budget in out years–the OMB says so. Tipton mistakes a blown up budget for a balanced one and the destruction of Medicare as saving it.

Tipton had a chart on a screen behind him during his talk, which depicted changes in spending and changes in revenue over time. The chart ended in 2077, which was never pointed out to the crowd. The chart showed spending increasing at the same level it has been increasing since Bush’s presidency began, which ignores the recently passed debt ceiling bill and its restrictions on future debt. The chart showed revenue as stagnant, which it will be only if Republicans continue blocking jobs bills until 2077. No responsible analyst would make the assumptions about spending and revenues that were presented in the chart Tipton so gladly displayed. It was a distortion, and designed to keep seniors wallowing in fear.

Ramping up the fear factor, Tipton breathlessly announced that Obama is about to start appointing members of the panel that will be making health decisions for all Americans. OMG, let’s just bring the defunct “death panel” back into the debate. I was sitting next to a nurse, who almost choked when she heard Tipton’s comment. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has no death panel contained within. Obama is not going to start appointing people to any death panel. Honest. The Republicans are just saying that to scare you.

While we were sitting in the room listening to the gullible being led down a spinning path, one of three rating agencies was busy downgrading the credit rating of the United States. In S&P’s announcement, they mentioned that the brinksmanship games played by House Republicans make the United States untrustworthy.