House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., has been on the road this summer trying to help take some of the pressure off new House members struggling to deal with outrage over Democratic health care proposals.
Hoyer this week accompanied a first-term congressman to an editorial board meeting at a California newspaper, saying the health care discontent is a result of the struggling economy and public sentiment that “their country is not running the way it ought to run. I think what happened with health care is it has become the forum for the expression of this anger and fear.”
Support for their health care proposal has slipped significantly in many surveys, and opposition has increased. A Rasmussen poll released Thursday found that 43 percent of respondents approved of the heath care plan while 53 percent opposed it. The numbers are nearly identical to a survey conducted two weeks ago, but represent an eight-point drop in support from early summer.
Hoyer, who spoke to the Merced Sun-Star editorial board Tuesday, was in California’s San Joaquin Valley to visit with Reps. Jim Costa and Dennis Cardoza, two Democrats considered in good shape for re-election. The purpose of Hoyer’s visit was to view the crippling water shortages that have exacerbated the area’s economic downturn, but health care became a big part of the discussion. Editors told Cardoza that readers were complaining about his refusal to hold a public town hall meeting on the Democratic health care proposal.
Cardoza and other Democratic lawmakers have eschewed the town hall format in favor of telephone conferences in order to avoid the raucous crowds at meetings across the country.
Holding the meetings by phone, Cardoza said, “doesn’t represent a media circus” for television. “You’re not going to get any pictures of people waving swastikas at me,” he said.
Cardoza, a member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, represents a large faction of House Democrats unwilling to back the Democratic health care proposal. “I’m not sure the bill is quite there yet,” Cardoza said.
Hoyer visited the districts of 11 members so far this summer, the vast majority of them expected to be in competitive races in the 2010 midterm elections. He traveled to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on Aug. 4 to accompany Rep. John Hall to an invitation-only roundtable at a local hospital.
According to local news reports, Hoyer said the forum’s objective was “dispelling myths” about the $1 trillion Democratic proposal, which would create a government-run health insurance plan and would subsidize health care through tax increases and cuts to Medicare.
Hall, who already has a Republican opponent for what many anticipate will be a competitive race in 2010, has stopped short of backing the Democratic proposal. And he has not scheduled any official health care town hall meetings in his district.
“He may feel he is shielding himself from negative public opinion, but he’s hurting himself because he is unable to communicate directly with his constituents,” said Hall’s Republican opponent, Greg Ball. “Health care could be the deciding factor of this race.”
