Fewer members of Congress willing to brave town hall meetings

JIM THORPE, Pa. - They had to leave the protest signs outside. As about 250 people settled into their chairs for a town hall meeting last week with Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), a staffer laid down the law: No cursing. No noisemakers. No chanting. Please respect others' rights.

For good measure, five uniformed state troopers patrolled the edges of the oak-floored auditorium at Penn's Peak resort.

As controlled as the situation was, at least Toomey was putting himself in position to take guff.

In Pennsylvania and across the country, many representatives and senators avoided holding the open forums that are traditional fixtures of the August congressional recess, and celebrated rituals of democracy.

Instead, they opted for topic-specific "roundtables" with business and community leaders, jobs fairs, factory tours, and other events closed to the general public.

Who can blame them? A record 87 percent of voters disapproved of Congress in a recent Gallup Poll.

And in recent years, town halls have become stages for activists to shout down opponents and post the battles on YouTube, part of the never-ending struggle for advantage in a confrontational political culture.

In 2009, tea-party supporters, some financed by corporate interests, swarmed town halls to attack Democrats who favored President Obama's health-care overhaul.

This summer, liberal groups and unions have returned the favor, targeting Republican town halls to demand higher taxes on the rich and corporations, and to push for new government spending on jobs in infrastructure and clean-energy technology.

Some cite concerns over security as a factor in the decline of town halls, after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.) was shot in the head at a meet-and-greet event in January. Six people were killed in the gunman's rampage.

A survey by No Labels, a nonprofit group that promotes bipartisan cooperation in government, found that 56 percent of U.S. House members held open town halls during the August recess. The group gave representatives credit for "tele-town halls," in which constituents dial in to a conference call, though skeptics say it is too easy to screen participants.

The number of meetings held by lawmakers declined to about 500 this summer, from 659 in the summer of 2009, according to a database compiled by CQ-Roll Call.