A packed house filled the Humanities building room 207 at Lee University on Monday to hear Congressman 3rd District Tennessee Chuck Fleischman speak at his first in a series of Town Hall Meetings.
Among those in attendance was a senior history class from Walker Valley High School who were very attentive and asked informative questions.
Summary of the meeting:
Too much debt!
Mr Fleischman started the morning talking about the Debt crisis our country is facing and eluded to the fact that we are hurting down to the local level and decisions should be made that affect its citizens by realizing we “In the United States we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, so no new taxes” Mr Fleischman said. Two thirds of our debt is
Foreign debt!
“Presently our total percentage of debt is about 18% of the total debt” he said. “ In 1970 approximately 5% of our our total foreign debt, today it is 47% and that our debt is being bought up by foreign countries like China and Russia. “years ago the American people were funding the debt with war bonds, we are no longer doing that” he continued.
Tax Code!
Chuck went on to say “ I do not like the current tax code, it is broken and we need to work on tax reform”. “Current tax law is volumes of paperwork and the average citizen cannot keep up with it.” If the taxes are lower, we will see more money, people with more money in their pockets spend more.” Mr Fleischman even fielded questions from the audience suggesting that he would support tax reform and would consider the Fair Tax, Flat tax or some other kind of reform.
Not seeing eye to eye!
The President and I don’t always see eye to eye but went on to say that the debate needs to continue on both sides of the aisle when it comes to solving the problems with our economy. The debate in this country needs to continue. He said he disagrees with the Presidents budget which is 25% of GDP and potentially may go to 50 percent of the GDP in the next few years which would be devastating.
Obamacare/Medicare!
“Obamacare, the Health Care Reform Act is a bad bill” He said he would support legislation to repeal this bill. The Healthcare bill will rob Medicare recipients of about 500 billion dollars annually. If Medicare is left alone, by 2020, it will be broke. My immediate plan to save Medicare is to sit down with the nation and talk about the issues and discuss ways to fix it. The Death panels or Beuracratic boards are wrong and we don’t need a board to make life and death decisions.
Debt Ceiling!
I voted against raising the debt ceiling! Many things have been reported wrong when he went to the Speaker of the House and discussed this issue, but thought that raising the ceiling would eventually bankrupt our country.
If you had a magic button?
A question from the group was “I have heard you say we have a debt problem, we have a spending problem not a revenue problem, we need to make changes, if you had a magic button you could push, what would you fix? The answer and the only low point for me was the vague answer I received. The Congressman didn’t seem to have the answer, although he danced around this issue very well he didn’t offer any real solutions.
A member of the audience also encouraged him to elaborate on this issue and he didn’t have the answer that we were looking for. A follow up and a request for a more complete answer will be forthcoming!
Mr Fleischman answered questions about fifteen minutes and was available for photo opportunities and was on his way to Meigs County to conduct another Town Hall Meeting!
Bradley County News Network 