Second town hall meeting draws bigger crowd

By Angie Thompson, Senior Reporter

TIFTON — U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall’s second town hall meeting Saturday morning at the UGA Tifton Campus Conference Center was better attended than one held in September but the concerns — health care, the deficit and taxes — remained the same.

Approximately 200 people attended Saturday’s meeting compared to approximately 60 at September’s meeting.

Marshall said again that he would not support either the House or Senate version of health care bills. He said each of those proposals “do some good things” but that any bill he would support would have to improve people’s access to health care, improve or at least maintain the quality of the nation’s health care and reduce health care costs.

“The current bills don’t change much,” Marshall said.

Marshall said that 60-80 percent of the nation’s projected debt is due to health care costs and that he believed continuing the spending would “speed us into bankruptcy.”

A man in the audience said that it recently cost him $800 at a private doctor’s office to have his two sons immunized for school. He said he paid $300 out of his own pocket after insurance.

“I could have lied and gone to the health department and gotten them for $10,” the man said. “It’s killing me.”

A woman said that she had worked since she was 15 years old and paid into Social Security and now she is being turned down for Medicare benefits. She said the government has taken $2 trillion out of the Social Security trust fund and “I can’t find it.”

“As far as I am concerned, the government has stolen my money,” the woman said.

“The Medicare trust fund has run out and the Social Security fun will run out,” Marshall said. “They hold IOUs against the U.S.”

Marshall said that he believed that the government did the right thing in the recent bank bailouts. He said that, so far, the return on the money given the banking industry had come back at 17 percent. When someone in the audience asked why there were no stipulations on the bailout funds given to banks and asked why some of the money was used for bonuses for bank executives, Marshall said that “the bonuses were really inappropriate but I don’t think we need to be in the business of regulating salaries.”

One man said “All we see is legislation that takes more taxes. We have to live within our budgets and Congress needs to do the same. Congress reminds me of a cocaine addict.”

When asked how the American people can help solve some of the country’s current problems, Marshall encouraged people to talk to their representatives.

“If the American people get behind fixing it, we’ll fix it,” Marshall said.

To contact senior reporter Angie Thompson, call 382-4321.

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