Good Town Hall with Our Representative
“You can pretend to care, but you can’t pretend to show up.”
— George L. Bell, civic leader and father of eight as cited on passiton.com
I’ve written before about calling your legislators and about attending demonstrations (#HandsOff and #NoKings). Tonight, Marsha and I attended a town hall meeting held by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici. Overall, I appreciate the hard work that Rep. Bonamici and her staff have been doing, and I believe they did an excellent job staying in front of the community.
The mechanics of a town hall
For those who have not been to a town hall meeting before, this one was held at a local middle school in Hillsboro, OR. Staff members were onsite to handle signups, distribute contact cards for the representative, and to handle any case work for constituents having issues with federal agencies, including the VA, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration.
In addition, the staff members issued raffle tickets to those of us wanting to ask live questions. (I had a question prepared, but my raffle ticket number did not get called).
The Hillsboro mayor, Beach Pace, opened the session to introduce Rep. Bonamici, who started her session formally framed between the U.S. and Oregon state flags and behind a U.S. House of Representatives podium to deliver prepared remarks.
Rep. Bonamici then later stepped away from the podium to engage directly with the audience through a Q&A, where her staff held microphones for those with the winning lottery tickets to ask questions..
Police officers were stationed at each side for security. Many seats in front were reserved for seniors or those with disabilities. As such, Marsha and I sat in the bleachers from where I took the photo above.
The session lasted one hour, ending basically right on schedule.
Excellent opening remarks
Rep. Bonamici’s opening remarks were on-point.
We are lucky in District 1, as Rep. Bonamici is building quite a tenure in the House, having served since 2012. According to GovTrack, Bonamici has been active in introducing bills (98th percentile), got bipartisan support for cosponsors for her bills (99th percentile), and got bicameral support involving both the House and Senate (97th percentile). All of this earns Rep. Bonamici a GovTrack Leadership Score in the 82nd percentile overall.
Of particular importance to me is that Rep. Bonamici covered in her opening remarks the majority of issues I have written about, including democratic norms, the separation of powers, and civil liberties.
On the erosion of democratic norms, she spoke about political violence and the shooting of Minnesota lawmakers, the influence of an unelected billionaire, and just poor law making with the “Big Bad Bill” (her term for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act or OBBA) and its rewrite in the middle of the night with provisions that surprised even Republican lawmakers.
On the separation of powers, she explicitly spoke about the Trump administration acting outside its legal authority to shut down agencies and illegally impounding funds appropriated by Congress. She spoke about the need to rely on the court system to do its job here.
On civil liberties, she criticized the recent incident with Senator Padilla at the Kristi Noem press conference, as well as the deployment of the Marines to enforce domestic policy.
In addition, Rep. Bonamici did an excellent job indicating her concern and support for programs of particular importance to her constituents (“Oregon values”), including Job Corps sites in Northwest Portland and Astoria, NOAA, and Head Start.
She also re-emphasized her office’s role in case work to serve her constituents to interact with federal agencies.
Concerns from the community
For me, another value of attending this Town Hall was to hear what others in the community cared to bring forward.
During the Q&A, attendees asked questions around current budgetary cuts, immigration, foreign policy, and the operation of government in general.
For budgetary cuts, the biggest topics were about Federal workers and retirees, the impact of cuts in supporting Social Security, and fears about the potential impact on Medicare in light of all the Medicaid cuts.
For immigration, people worried about the ICE raids in the community, and one audience member was getting self-deportation pressure via text message even after naturalizing.
On the foreign policy front, both Israel/Palestine and Israel/Iran came up. Surprisingly, Russia/Ukraine was not mentioned by any audience members this time.
Concerns about the government in general were also raised, including the lack of bipartisanship in Congress, as well as the overall lawlessness of the Trump administration. There was also some discussion about the rumor that the Veteran’s Administration could deny healthcare to Democrats.
Response themes
Personally, I think Rep. Bonamici did a good job with all of these questions. I categorize her responses along three themes:
Reliance on courts. The net is that there are just challenges in the current Congress and that the current Congress might not be able to act quickly enough from a legislative standpoint in some instances. In many cases, we will have to rely on the judicial branch to rule against the lawlessness of the executive branch.
Some things are politically difficult. While the current budgetary bill is reducing funding for Medicaid, so far Social Security has not been touched because it, as an earned benefit (not an entitlement), is too politically popular. On the flip side, she also indicated that impeaching Donald Trump was something that couldn’t realistically happen right now. She explained how she voted to impeach him twice, and both times these impeachments failed to result in convictions in the Senate. She also indicated that John Roberts’ decision to grant Trump immunity while in office made this even more difficult.
Need to just keep working across the aisle. In general, Rep. Bonamici reinforced that everyone, regardless of party, wants the same things, but there are different views about how to achieve the goals and the role of government in addressing the issues. For example, there is strong bipartisan support for a resolution preventing the President from ordering US strikes on Iran without Congressional approval. She is trying to work across the aisle all the time, and her record shows this.
With the current challenges, I see the issues and the need for the Democratic party to return to the majority in the House.
My thoughts
Overall, I felt Rep. Bonamici had very reasonable positions, and it is clear to me she is listening to people in her district and working hard. I have some suggestions in the meantime that I’d like to hear her opinions on, but I will save those comments until I can get the right forum to express them to her.
Right now, I appreciate that she continues to introduce legislation, work across the aisle, and serve her constituents. I encourage others to get to know the work of their representatives.