Will Teague hear what his constituents are saying?
There’s been some discussion on the Internet about a meeting U.S. Rep. Harry Teague, D-N.M., held in Roswell last week, with the commentary being largely critical of many who attended the meeting with Teague. Here’s another view:
By Herb Atkinson
Early last week I received a recorded telephone call from Congressman Harry Teague announcing he was going to be conducting a public meeting at Pepper’s Grill in Roswell on Wednesday afternoon, and I was invited to come. When I arrived, I joined about 60 other Americans there to meet with, and hear from, their congressional representative. Everyone was asked to gather in the west-end meeting room. The only problem was that Congressman Teague was sitting in a corner booth in the restaurant, not in the meeting room with the people.
When I asked one of his staff about this arrangement, I was told that if I wanted to visit with the congressman, I would need to put my name on a sign-up sheet to visit with him one-on-one. As the crowd learned more about this arrangement, people became upset. You see, his meeting was only scheduled for an hour, and there were already enough people on the “one-on-one” list to last for more than an hour.
It became clear that Congressman Teague had no intention of meeting with a group of his constituents, as his invitation indicated.
A resounding ‘NOOOO!’
Only after the assembled citizens in the meeting room moved into the restaurant area and insisted that he answer public questions in a public forum did the congressman reluctantly stand and address the crowd. (I might add that the crowd consisted of people I recognized as both Republicans and Democrats.)
He began by saying that he assumed most of the assembly was there to discuss the bill he had just voted for in the House — commonly known as the cap-and-trade bill. The congressman told the crowd he voted for the bill because of an amendment he added that he believed would help some of the people in his district.
When pressed about whether he had read and understood all 1,300 pages of the bill and all the provisions it contained, he said, “I have staff people to do that for me.” When asked why he would vote for a bill that would tax every American an additional $3,000-plus a year, he answered, “It is really only about the amount of a postage stamp.”
The citizens present seemed to have difficulty getting their arms around that answer.
There were a lot of questions being fired at the congressman from many parts of the room, many at the same time. So, in his defense, it was very hard to cover them all. One question that did get an answer was, since he had voted for legislation that would provide tax dollars to fight global warming, did he believe in global warming? His answer was, “I don’t know if I believe in it or not. I am not a scientist.”
Congressman Teague was also asked, if the cap-and-trade bill were put to a public vote in his district, did he believe the majority of the citizens would vote for it? He answered, “I believe they would.” This answer brought a resounding “NOOOO!” from the crowd.
‘These are your constituents, Harry’
During all the visits with my congressmen I have attended in the last 29 years, it was never necessary to have a staff person intervene to help the congressman field questions or quiet the crowd. This was certainly the case last Wednesday. Make no mistake, this was a crowd of upset American citizens there to hear from their elected representative about the issues flying through Congress that are of great importance to them.
From my prospective, neither the congressman, nor his staff, ever planned to have this type of open, public meeting. It seemed clear to me that the intention was to never have to face his concerned constituents as a group.
I think that a parting comment, voiced over the noise of the crowd, summed up the feeling of the citizens very well: “These are your constituents, Harry, make sure you hear the voice of these Americans today!”
Only with time and watching his voting record will we know if he heard or not.
Atkinson is a businessman from Roswell.
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If the Roswell Daily Record had bothered to send a reporter to the meeting, a more accurate account could have been made. Radio KBIM's reporter was there, is it possible he recorded the audio? I do not listen to KBIM so I do not know. I saw three people recording the meeting with video cameras. If one could see the tapes, one could decide for themselves how rude, obnoxious and loud about 25 people were. I would like to to see who it was that was shouting that he did not want Nancy Pelosi to probe his colon.
When I first read this I thought it was about the event in Las Cruces. Same exact thing happened here, too. I was a democrat for over 20 years and changed parties this year to support a candidate that didn't make the cut, so it doesn't matter which party you are in. What matters is that you voted. That being said, we were told by a few people who came to support Harry to leave, that we didn't support him, so we should leave. Excuse me, I may not support him, I may not have voted for him, but he DOES represent me. Now, if I hadn't voted, that would be different.
Great article, btw. I wrote a similar one on my blog – check your stats – you are probably getting hits from the House of Reps. in DC. I am.
You bring up excellent points, Dr. J. The unthinking person who accepts the oft-repeated but incoherently derived $1800 (or $3000 or $4000) figure is accepting debunked political spin instead of sober calculations from the non-partisan, respected official body charged with the task. Your post is a bit confusing because you appear to question the CBO projections but then proceed to quote from it.
The CBO analysis indeed has many problems, and does not include many impacts — in fact, they clearly state they did not include some projected economic benefits expected from a transition to clean energy sources that would accrue to American households across the economic spectrum. These include savings from energy efficiency; cheaper sources of energy (the price of oil, for example, will inevitably rise as it is a finite resource; consumer prices are always vulnerable to price fluctuations in oil, as we saw last year when the price per barrel skyrocketed and costs were passed through to consumers); lower health costs from reduced pollution; and the increase in payroll and capital gains tax revenue from the much-touted but as-yet-unseen 'green jobs' boom in clean energy & technology. (For example, jobs in building efficiency upgrades or installation of solar panels must be done on American soil and cannot be outsourced overseas.) These benefits are difficult, if not impossible, to calculate but should be mentioned.
Also important to mention are the projected billions in revenue from the sale of carbon permits to polluting industries, set to begin in 2012. Business will do what businesses always do, and pass these costs through to consumers, but the revenue from the carbon auction is to be rebated to taxpayers and lower income families are to receive subsidies paid out of that revenue. As you mentioned, how that would work is still undetermined, and is rife with pitfalls that could undercut any economic benefits if not administered properly.
Up to now, industries have been free to pollute, a perverse incentive with the costs of cleanup passed on to the taxpayer. Forcing pollution-intensive industries to pay for the right to pollute beyond a specified allotment puts the economic incentive on industry to innovate, which history shows they will do when the incentives are there. But a carbon trading regime is rife with dangerous pitfalls and opportunities to game the system, as the EU discovered.
Finally, when considering the bill, voters might also want to ponder the underlying premise — the projection that it will cost far less to transition to clean energy sources now rather than wait until fossil fuel supplies are seriously constrained in the future. How we find common ground as a nation will be very difficult with so many competing interests and needs across the electorate.
Indeed, factual numbers are important for an informed decision, as is a diverse view of these flaky and uncertain cherry-picked "guesstimates" alleged to be "factual". The CBO statement is misleading and does not include many impacts that are likely but difficult to determine, thus indirect and as multipliers.
Let's look at the big picture here. If the cost is only $175 per household (say 100 million households) per year, then we are talking about roughly $175 million in costs. Let's compare that to the projected (by the CBO) tax revenues to the government of $87.5 BILLION per year. Now, if you think the government is going to raise your taxes by $87.5 billion and yet the citizens will only pay $175 million, then I have a bridge for you in Brooklyn. Those tax costs will be passed on to you. Only $175 million will be direct, visible costs, the rest will be embedded in all your consumer goods passed on to you by the manufacturers, retailers, etc. You will pay more than a "postage stamp" a day, bet on it.
And there is more, the CBO says in it's study: "“The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap. The reduction in GDP would also include indirect general equilibrium effects, such as changes in the labor supply resulting from reductions in real wages and potential reductions in the productivity of capital and labor.” Hummmm… so many other indirect effects on the economy are not included as well, and they could be big. In fact, a late amendment to the Climate Tax bill allows for up to 3 years of unemployment benefits for those who lose their jobs, to the tune of up to $40 billion a year. Think it will not effect employment and long term unemployment? Obviously it will, big time.
And there is more. The "postage stamp a day cost" also doesn't take into account the difficulty in estimating the effect of such a complex piece of legislation, and there are several caveats. The study did not excluded several elements of the regime that are difficult to predict, such as how costs to government would be distributed and how subsidies for carbon capture and storage might be allocated.
As the CBO notes, much will depend on how these missing costs and benefits are distributed across different income levels:
“…if most of the omitted costs were to fall on lower-income households while most of the omitted benefits were to fall on higher-income households, the distributional outcomes could be significantly different”.
So you see only a non-critical thinking person would accept at face value a politically spun catch phrase to use as justification not to research and understand this bill much more deeply.
It's important to note the factual numbers so that voters can make an informed decision on the legislation.
The $3000 figure is a miscalculation from an MIT study, and one of the lead authors of the study has publicly requested people to stop misreading his results. http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/story/exclusive_letter_mit_professor_tells_boehner_to_stop/
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that the costs of the cap-and-trade bill would be an economy-wide average of $175 per household (not per person) per year through 2020; those numbers further break down to being a net benefit of $40 per year for the lowest income families and $245 for household in the highest economic strata — or about the cost of a postage stamp per day per household.
That's likely the source of Teague's 'postage stamp' comment.
Again, factual numbers are important for making an informed decision on any legislation.
With all due respect, this is something of a political hit job. I say that for two simply outlandish statements: first, the insistence that every legislator read every 1,300 page bill that comes before them instead of delegating out some of the work to staff, experts, and others.
Did Mr. Atkinson read all 1,300 pages? Did Steve Pearce, who Mr. Atkinson is undoubtedly supporting? Did Pearce read ANY 1,300 page bill in his years in Congress? Of course not.
The second hint that this is a nasty political hit job is the estimate of $3,000 per person cost. Even most far-right estimates I've seen aren't in that range.
Looks like more scare tactics, exaggerations, and outlandish double standards from the right. I don't doubt that the event could have been handled better, but the author's transparent bias, unfair double standards, and false data make his account, unfortunately, unreliable.
It is a bit ironic, but Harry's answer to the anthropogenic global warming (man-made)question is at least honest. However, he has chosen to listen to biased political scientists for his faith in this hypothesis instead of the thousands of educated and experienced scientists (like myself) who know the uncertain and shaky science behind the hypothesis which renders it useless for basing solid policy. If all the professional politicians in DC and Santa Fe were as honest as Harry is about this uncertainty, this Waxman-Markey bill, and those like it in NM, would have died years ago.
Ms. Wedum,
Just because someone "demands" answers from their elected Congressman does not mean they are right wing republicans nor protesters. What it means is people are beginning to see through all the "pretty" words and empty promises made. What needs to be done in this country has more to do with what is right for this country rather than if it is good for republicans or democrats.
People are beginning to "open" their eyes. I for one am sick of being labeled a right wing republican when I disagree with a democrat. The people elected to serve US, need to remember why they are in Washington, and it isn't to do what is popular with those in Washington, but rather for the citizens they were elected to represent. Harry Teague needs to stand up and be his own man, but unfortunatley, I don't expect that to happen.
Oh, by the way, Herb Atkinson of Roswell is a registered Republican. And I am a registered Democrat. But you probably already figured that out.
Congressman Teague was ambushed by a bunch of right-wing Republicans. Sure there were more people than he expected. Probably the next time he does this he will get a bigger room, and none of these protestors will come.
He did have enough room in Alamogordo, but protestors still complained that they didn't get to talk to him right away. There was a signup sheet, but they wanted their names to be put at the top of the list, I guess.
And WHEN, if ever, did Pearce meet with his constituents in an informal setting like that?
You should have been at the "NM Freedom Project" meeting held at the Cloud Country development east of Cloudcroft. The article advertising the event said "What NMFREEDOMPROJECT supports is free speech…" but no one was allowed to ask questions or make comments. Only the person in charge and one politician (Republican, of course) did any talking.
"“I don’t know if I believe in it or not. I am not a scientist.”"
. . . you've got to be kidding me. That's a disastrous answer. I wonder what Teague's answer would be if he was questioned about evolution, gravity, or the speed of light.
"Congressman Teague! Is your refrigerator running?"
"I'm not sure if it is or not. I am not a refrigerator repairman."
. . .that answer isn't just dumb. It's quantum dumb. There are plenty of good, smart answers to the questions Teague was getting, but he disregarded all of them and practically admitted that he voted the way he did because the party made him do it and was nice enough to give him some political cover for him to hide behind. This is a profile in dumb. Can we get a do-over on the election last November?
This account sounds much more believeable than the left wing blogs. This issue is extremely important and like the bailouts for the irresponsible , stimulus that is doing nothing, pro-trial lawyer legislation, land lockups, etc. that Harry has voted for to follow his leader and mentor Pelosi, they tell a story of a left wing liberal pretending to be a moderate business-friendly type. Just watch health care, new taxes, more land lockups for enviro-lobbyists, etc. and the choice will be so easy in 2010 to send Harry out of the House.
Clearly he knows that the significant financial support he received from the national party, not to mention any chance of ever being heard by anybody, comes with a price.
There is no way he can honestly tell anyone that bill was good for his constiuents.
Vote for a Hobbs oil man, get another Nancy Pelosi.
Truly Amazing Arrogance!
Having studied politics (including NM politics) all of my life, I remember that NM voters can attach themselves to one issue and ignore the rest of the issues to the detriment of the candidate that happens to be on the wrong side of that issue. With that said, I believe that this particular vote could be that one issue for Harry Teague.
I sure would like to see fresh polling data on Harry's favorable ratings in light of this recent vote. This will be a fun race to watch this coming election.
Herb, the same thing happened in Las Cruces.