Loebsack gets earful from raucous town hall crowd

By James Q. Lynch

The Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS – Even before 2

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District Rep. Dave Loebsack's town hall meeting started Saturday morning, the crowd of more than 500 people demonstrated they weren't there just to hear what he had to say.

They wanted to deliver a message. Or several messages.

When Mount Vernon Republican Emma Nemecek help up her homemade “Obama lies/Grandma dies” sign, Ballantyne Auditorium at Kirkwood Community College erupted in cheers and boos and more sign waving. “No government option” and “Obama you kill me” signs were matched with “Health care now” “Health care is your birthright” placards.

Encouraging the overflow audience to be respectful, people were asked to introduce themselves to those around them. Loebsack staffer Kirsten Running-Marquardt said “all are welcome in a peaceful manner.”

Not everyone was peaceful, according to Cedar Rapids Police Lt. Tobey Harrison. Two people were removed after their disagreement became physical, he said. Both returned to the auditorium after police talked to them.

It was evident from the first question that many in the audience felt they were being disrespected.

“Are you listening?” asked Shelley Ask of Cedar Rapids, who said she feels President Obama is “laughing at us.” She asked Loebsack to consider free-market health-care solutions, including tort reform, rather than a “government-run, government-written” health-care plan.

Loebsack agreed he doesn't want “something completely government-run,” but favors a public option, an alternative to private insurance coverage.

Loebsack, a second term Democrat, spent a good deal of the hour-long forum responding to various objections to the health-care proposals Congress is debating. He said no federal funds would be used to pay for abortions and health-care providers would not be forced to provide abortions. The federal government would not ration health-care, he added.

He answered one question pointing out there is bipartisan agreement on a number of key points, including a prohibition on insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Along the way, he defended Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who one questioner accused of lying about “death panels” that would make end-of-life decisions. Grassley never mentioned “death panels,” Loebsack said, but may have been wrong in his characterization of the bill when he told an Iowa audience “(We) should not have a government-run plan to decide to pull the plug on grandma.”

If those who opposed Loebsack's positions on health-care reform were not the majority, they were more vocal than supporters and their frustration went beyond health-care.

Those frustrations reached a crescendo when Lori Tritle of Cedar Rapids told Loebsack she was “deeply offended” by Obama's recent comment he didn't “want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to just get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.”

“I will not shut up and get out of the way for any president -- Democrat or Republican,” said Tritle, who is part of a group, Political Changes Needed. “In last seven months we put up with bailouts, a stimulus that didn't work, the omnibus, $2 million for a pig poop study, cap-and-tax, the GM takeover, the bank takeover, the list goes on.

“We've had enough. We really have had enough,” Tritle said.

“First of all, I'm not going to tell anyone to shut up,” Loebsack replied, adding that Tritle had “expressed in a nutshell a lot of concerns that a lot of folks have today about all these different programs.”

Although it's too soon to tell whether it will work, Loebsack said, he stands by his vote for the $787 billion stimulus.

 “We needed to turn this country around, to first make sure we were not going to slide further into a recession, possibly a depression,” he said.

He assured the audience he was listening to them and on health-care reform would consider their concerns before voting on “whatever we end up with, if we end up with anything at all.”

And whatever Congress ends up voting on, Loebsack said, “whether it is government-run or single-payer or whatever the case may be, I believe this is truly an American solution.”

That brought the first of his 16 town hall meetings to a raucous conclusion.