WORLD> America
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WORLD> America
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Lawmakers face angry crowds on health care
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-12 10:13
In Georgia, Democratic Rep. David Scott's staff arrived at his Smyrna, Georgia, office outside Atlanta on Tuesday morning to find a large, black swastika spray-painted on a sign out front bearing his name. The vandalism occurred roughly a week after Scott was involved in a contentious argument over health care at a community meeting. Scott, who is black, said he also has received mail in recent days that used N-word references to him and that characterized Obama as a Marxist. "We have got to make sure that the symbol of the swastika does not win, that the racial hatred that's bubbling up does not win this debate," Scott said in a telephone interview. "That's what is bubbling up with all of this. There's so much hatred out there for President Obama." In Hillsboro, Missouri, a frustrated Sen. Claire McCaskill admonished a rowdy crowd of some 1,500 at a town hall where she was peppered with questions about health care for veterans, seniors and illegal immigrants and provisions funding abortions. One man was arrested after allegedly ripping a sign from a woman that showed a picture of Rosa Parks sitting on a bus and read, "First Lady of Civil Rights." "I don't understand this rudeness," McCaskill told the crowd at one point. "I honestly don't get it." Someone shouted out that they didn't trust McCaskill. "Beg your pardon ... you don't trust me?" McCaskill said. "I don't know what else I can do." One participant, Mary Ann Fieser of Hillsboro, said elected officials owe it to citizens to allow them a forum for showing their displeasure with the health care plan. "If they don't let us vent our frustrations out, they will have a revolution," she said. Though his popularity is slipping in polls, Obama himself is repeatedly trying to make the case to the public for passage of comprehensive legislation this year to bring down costs and extend coverage to many of the 50 million uninsured. He made that appeal at his own town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he hardly faced the tough crowds greeting other Democrats. Specter said that in a long life in politics he hadn't seen anything like what he witnessed Tuesday and at a town hall last weekend that turned even uglier. "There is more anger in America today than at any time I can remember," Specter said.
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