The turnout was good and discussion lively when 9th District Congressman Adam Smith held a town hall meeting on Aug. 25 at the Burien City Council Chambers to discuss the national budget, debt reduction and economic recovery.

Please click the photo above for another picture from the meeting.

Rep. Smith is a member of the Democratic Party in his 8th term representing the 9th District of Washington State and the top democrat in the House Armed Services Committee.

Rep. Smith started the discussion with a presentation on his understanding of the economic climate in the United States, and then opened the floor to suggestions from the crowd about 20 minutes in.

“We face many many challenges in this country right now,” he said. “This is the worst economy of my life … massive budget deficit and debt … and we still have 150,000 troops deployed between Iraq and Afghanistan. If we are going to begin to solve them it is my believe we need to be honest about the choices that we face and one of the great challenges we face as a nation is we are deeply divided right now.”

Rep Smith broke the county down into four ideologies:

The first group feels, “We have one and only one problem and that’s the government spending more money than it takes in and you should just cut spending. Cut what you have to cut in order to get back to balance … no revenue should be increased, cut spending at that’s how we should go about it.”

Next “You have folks on the opposite end of the spectrum who say we have 9.3 percent unemployment, we’ve got a recession … you are not spending enough, we need more stimulus and run the deficit up higher in the short term.”

Third you have those that believe “We can’t balance the budget right now, it’s too far out of whack, but we need to get ourselves on a path to greater fiscal responsibility. We need to cut spending and increase revenue and we need to do it over a 10 year period … (but) don’t do that right now because of where the economy is at, but get that plan out there.”

And lastly, “The truth of the matter is the majority of the county falls into a fourth category where they would kind of like the deficit to be brought under control, but they don’t want to cut anything and they also don’t want to increase taxes.”

That fourth and majority opinion, Rep. Smith said, is an “untenable position.”

He handed out survey results from a nationwide Pew Research poll from Feb. 2011 to illustrate his point. Anywhere from 68 percent to 87 percent of respondents wanted a list of issues from education to Medicare to terror defense to “stay the same or increase,” while only 30 percent were willing to raise sales or personal income taxes.

20 minutes into the discussion Rep. Smith handed the floor over to his constituents and asked for their opinion on how to cure America’s ailing economy and massive debt.

The ideas came flying in.

One woman said, “I don’t think we can do much about the deficit while we are pouring billions into these (Iraq and Afghanistan) wars.”

Another asked Rep. Smith why he OK’d a bill allowing T-Mobile and AT&T to merge when many believe the merger will result in 20,000 lost jobs. He said he would look into the facts.

Another man expressed his discontent, as a democrat, with the Obama administration that has proven “they are crummy negotiators,” to which Rep. Smith replied he was not there to defend the President, but only himself.

Issues from the reinstatement of the Glass Steagall Act to genetically altered food were raised as a roomful of Burienites were given the chance to speak directly with their congressman.

“If I had to say the core reason why I’m a democrat is I believe in the power of government to help people. I believe in that, that’s what makes me a progressive. Now, I’m not socialist, I don’t think government should run everything.”

“Grover Norquist (president of Americans for Tax Reform) does not under any circumstances … their approach is the government is awful, everything the government does is awful and you cannot possibly cut it enough.”

Grover Norquist gained notoriety for his quote, “I don’t want to get rid of government, I just want to shrink it down to the size where I can drown it in my bathtub.”