GOP Rep. Dan Lungren, a member of the House Leadership, encountered hostility from his constituents at a second town hall over the weekend. But, unlike an event earlier this month in which a young woman in the audience who challenged him on the issues was forcibly removed, this time it was Lungren who threatened to leave, eliciting a chorus of “boos.”
At a town hall last Wednesday attended by ThinkProgress, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) was asked why he supports the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy since America has lost millions of jobs since its passage. When Lungren deflected, saying that everyone benefits from the Bush tax cuts and that Obama supported extending them, several people began jeering him. Lungren, who at one point threatened to leave the Carmichael town hall, said he doesn’t know of any economists who support raising taxes during a recession. Ironically, that same day the National Association for Business Economics released a study showing nearly three quarters of business economists stating they support raising revenues through taxes:
LUNGREN: Obama extended the tax cuts for several more years […]
CONSTITUENT: You use the deficit ceiling to blackmail! That’s what you did. […]
LUNGREN: I know of no economists who suggest we ought to raise taxes in the midst of a down turn in the economy.
Lungren, a former California state attorney general and failed candidate for the U.S. Senate, is chairman of the House Administration Committee and earned the nickname “Styrofoam Dan,” because one of his first acts when he took over as chairman this year was to kill the Democrats’ program to green the U.S. Capitol Building, an act that, among other things, replaced cups and utensils made from biodegrable materials in cafeterias with takeaway items made from styrofoam.
Lungren barely survived reelection in 2010, which was otherwise a Republican wave election. Redistricting may cost him and another House chairman — Rep. David Dreier, chairman of the House Rules Committee — their seats, if the map created as a result of California’s new system of appointing amateurs to divvy up the state after every Census receives final approval from the courts.
