We are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I've got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would respectfully submit you're not listening to them.
I think to close half of Magic Kingdom for the purpose of a White House invitation town hall meeting on a phony main street on behalf of a phony president just strikes me as weird.
Last year in Germany at a town hall in Leipzig there was a game music concert played by the orchestra and some of the Final Fantasy scores were played. This year there is another concert scheduled in the same location, for game music.
So, for me the town hall meetings are really an opportunity to engage in two-way dialogue with people, and they've been very helpful.
My mother, Minuetta Kessler, was a concert pianist and composer who performed at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall.
Few Americans have ever met their Congresspeople. They don't see them at the grocery store; they don't meet them at the bowling alley. They're more likely to see their representatives in photographs from the Daily Grill in Washington, D.C., than at a local town hall.
Like my colleagues, I did about 10 to 15 town hall meetings on this issue; and what I found is people came with a sincere interest to learn, a sincere interest to cut through the rhetoric and understand how this Medicare bill impacts them in their daily lives.
If you want to pray at a town hall meeting or a school board meeting or in the halls of Congress, that ought to be acceptable in the United States.
My town hall meetings are with friends and neighbors, fellow Americans. We engage.
We've had Town Hall meetings, we've witnessed election after election, in which the American people have taken a position on the President's health care bill. And the bottom line is the people don't like this bill. They don't want it.