To: Interested Journalists and Editorial Writers
From: Adam Smith, Communications Director, Public Campaign
Subject: A “pay-per-view” Congress?
Date: August 19, 2011

“The House Budget Committee chairman [Paul Ryan] isn’t holding any face-to-face open-to-the-public town hall meetings during the recess, but like several of his colleagues he will speak only for residents willing to open their wallets.”
- source: Politico, August 16, 2011

After leaving Washington following the default and debt crisis debate, members of Congress went home for the traditional August recess to hear from constituents. What’s emerged since then is a series of disturbing stories about elected officials attempting to avoid meetings in open forums with voters who may disagree with them or ask difficult questions. The most egregious examples, in our view, are those members of Congress who are attending forums that require participants to pay for admission to speak with their elected representative as a replacement for open, free meetings.

Just a few examples:

• House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (D-Wis.) one public forum during the August recess is a $15 per person event and is pledging to tour local businesses, but is holding only one “open” teleconference call to hear from constituents.
• On August 23rd, Freshman Rep. Dan Quayle (R-Ariz.) is scheduled to speak at a meeting of the Arizona Republican Lawyers Association. Tickets are $35. The event is hosted at the Snell & Wilmer law office in Phoenix, a firm whose lawyers donated thousands to Quayle’s 2010 election bid. Rep. Quayle, as of this writing, has not scheduled any free meetings.
• Last week, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) was the featured guest at a “CEO to CEO” luncheon of the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Commerce. $30 (for members). After a contentious town hall in April, Barletta has not scheduled any open-to-everyone meetings this August.
• Rep. Chip Craavack (R-Minn.) has come under fire for scheduling pay-only events in Duluth with a business lobby group, his district’s population center, while holding open forums in rural, distant sections of the region.

Now, in each of these cases, local or national groups are responsible for collecting the admission, and the admission often goes to cover meals or event expenses. That is, on balance, appropriate. It’s assumed by both the elected official and the group hosting the event that those who pay to attend a meeting are generally supportive of the elected official. The problem comes when these forums become, de facto, the only opportunity constituents have to ask their elected officials questions or to seek their support or opposition to particular legislation or policy.

At this economically distressed time it is arguable that those who CAN’T afford to pay – the jobless, those facing foreclosure, struggling students, etc. – are the ones who ought to have their elected official’s ear. Frankly, we know that big donors have face time with our elected officials. What about those who are out of work or worried about losing their homes?

Americans already believe that members of Congress listen too much to those who have the financial wherewithal to contribute large sums of money to candidates. At this time, with the economy suffering and few available jobs for millions of Americans, we believe to extend that perversion of democracy — that those who pay get heard — to constituent meetings is an egregious and outrageous travesty of equal representation.

It boils down to this: People should not have to pay money to talk to their member of Congress. It’s that simple.

In August 2009, when Tea Party concern regarding health care emerged as a major force, Republican members of Congress took delight in seeing Democrats getting pressed by angry constituents. Today, with an electorate angry over Washington’s inability to put the needs of the country before the special interests or parties, and concerned about jobs and the economy, all members of Congress ought to be willing to listen directly to their constituents.

This is what American democracy is about: doing the job you were elected to do, and, taking the consequences if you don’t. Members of Congress are elected to serve the everyday people back home.

“Pay-per-view” meetings, as Politico coined them, in the absence of town hall meetings, subvert democracy, and glaringly extend the pay-to-play attitude of Washington fundraising to district meetings. That’s wrong.