The meeting started with the congressman talking about how the legislative process is broken. This isn't new...he's been making the same points in one form or another since I started attending these things several years ago. The short version is that party leadership (both Republican and Democrat) controls the process of writing and amending legislation so tightly that rank-and-file representatives have no real control over what is brought up for votes. That means compromise legislation that might actually be able to pass is never created (via the amendment process) and/or brought to the floor for a vote. Most representatives go along with this because the party leaders control a lot of their election campaign funding, plus it means they don't have to go on the record on controversial issues.
I don't disagree with this assessment, but I feel like Amash is preaching to the choir. We're the district that elected a guy who bucks the system. (Well, not me personally, I didn't vote for him. But the district did.) Telling us about it doesn't help much. What he needs to be doing is using his platform as a member of Congress to reach a national audience, if he really believes that going back to a more open legislative process is a key component to improving how Congress works. Convince voters in other districts to get after their representatives about joining Amash in making changes.
After that came the Q&A session, which was scheduled for about 40 minutes but lasted more like 90. That's pretty common for Amash, in my experience, and very much not what you see from other politicians. He seems to genuinely want to hear from as many constituents as possible. A lot of the questions were about current news items and he didn't say anything really unexpected. Yes, Mueller should finish his investigation into Russia and the 2016 presidential election; no, immigrant children should not be separated from their parents at the border; yes, we should hold our leaders to a standard of telling the truth. He was careful not to call out President Trump directly on any of these things, but otherwise it was fairly standard stuff like you might read in any news story.
One question that was a bit different brought up Amash's vote for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act back in December 2017. In his response, Amash claimed that the tax cuts were progressive, moving the tax burden toward wealthier Americans. I have no idea what he's referring to. A quick web search will give you any number of opposite assertions, including this one from the Tax Policy Center. And if you add in the corporate tax cuts, which mostly benefit the wealthier folks that can afford to own those companies, it's even more tilted to favor the wealthy. I don't know if Amash was confused, misinformed, or what...I choose to believe he wasn't intentionally lying since he's not done so in other areas to the best of my knowledge.
It's good to hear directly from my representative, even if the answers aren't always exactly what you'd want to hear. It would be nice if my Senators and state legislators would do the same someday.
