The meeting was what one would expect: only the ideologically pure were allowed to attend and the event was geared towards generating photo opportunities and sound bites.
Congressmen David Price and Brad Miller also held a town hall meeting. A College Republican attending Meredith noticed the meeting on the schedule and put out a call for hundreds of supporters (most of them elderly seniors) to pack the hall and intimidate Price and Milller.
The CR organizer of the counter action demanded that Price and Miller offer an alternative plan to the President's, but it seemed that the Democratic Congressmen emphasized that the problems with SS were mild and paled in comparison to the Federal budget deficit and that the deficit was the real problem.
Miller noted how a similar meeting had been held recently, but that this one was the only one that was open to a free exchange of ideas.
It's a mark of how little the Republican Party is concerned with broad participation in political life. They seem to try to bottle up every issue so that only they control the debate. This last event in Raleigh was just one example of their strong-arming and attempting to stifle opposition to their agenda.
So far, the only account of the meeting and the confrontation of the CRs with Price and Miller is what I heard on WUNC radio. Their news archive doesn't contain the segment I listened to but I will monitor the local news and the radio station web site for updates.
Update [2005-2-24 8:0:39 by Anonymous]: The WUNC story that played yesterday evening (the All Things Considered story) provided a better picture of both sides of the story than the one that aired this morning. Last night, the Democratic position that private accounts would do nothing to support SS while adding trillions to the deficit was a clear answer to the Republican contention that private accounts are a natural way to improve SS.
This morning (the Morning Edition story), the deficit was mentioned by Price, but WUNC choose to put more emphasis on Democrats in the audience who were demanding that Democrats also provide a solution. Price is given a great opportunity to point out once again that the deficits are the real problem.
However, the real story is that it looks like Republicans are trying to pack these meetings to take up space so that non-activists will be shut out from the meetings.
The good news is that Price and Miller are carrying this show all over North Carolina and if the Republicans keep trying this tactic, it is likely that the forums will get a lot of media attention and the Republicans will come off looking like bullies intent on disrupting legitimate political debate.