One voter advised Rep. Lou Barletta to bend on the budget; another warned him not to. | AP Photo Freshmen feel the heat back home

LANSFORD, Pa. — Any lawmaker in a swing district can expect to take criticism from his right flank at a town hall meeting. But at an American Veterans outpost tucked deep in the Pocono Mountains this week, freshman Republican Rep. Lou Barletta took heat from every direction — from Democrats angry with the tax cuts in the GOP budget, to conservatives who thought he caved on the last continuing resolution vote, to a precocious 16-year-old critical of the lawmaker’s environmental record.

First Barletta was told “not to be steadfast in Paul Ryan’s Republican plan,” to “bend a little, work and come together to pass something that’s agreeable to everybody.” Moments later, another constituent told him, “I don’t want you to bend; I want you to stand firm” on spending, even if that means a national debt default.


And hardly anyone in his senior-heavy district wants to see Congress touch their Medicare benefits.

Barletta’s district is one of a handful that Democrats have zeroed in on this spring break: One of 13 that voted for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 but elected a Republican to Congress in 2010. The town halls in Pennsylvania showed deep concern about the national debt but extreme wariness of cuts to entitlements, and constituents are starting to vent their frustrations with the new House GOP majority, bolstered by 87 freshmen, all but one of whom voted for Ryan’s budget plan. Five of the Kerry-Obama districts are in eastern Pennsylvania — and three are represented by freshmen, including Barletta, Rep. Patrick Meehan and Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick.

In his blue collar Scranton-area district — birthplace of Vice President Joe Biden, hometown of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham and represented for the past 26 years by former Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Democrat — Barletta is trying to strike a balance that stays true to his conservative campaign but is sympathetic to an aging constituency fearful about entitlement reform.

In the middle of Barletta’s presentation on the national debt, a man in the front row interrupted him. “As a senior, did I not pay for these Medicare and Social Security benefits? Didn’t I give Washington my dollars so that as a senior I could live on them?”

Barletta replied “Yes, and it is going to be there. It’s not being touched for any of the senior citizens now, but for my daughter—”

The man cut him off again. “It should be there for her as well.”

And so it went for the roughly 90-minute meeting, as voters peppered the congressman with questions about his budget vote and concerns about an upcoming deadline to raise the debt limit.

“Some seniors still do not realize that this will not affect them,” Barletta said later. “If members do not go back and make sure seniors are informed, then the scare tactics work.”

But liberal groups are already working to make these members’ votes for Ryan’s budget plan — which would turn Medicare into a program that provides federal subsidies for seniors to purchase private plans — work against them. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was planning ads in some of these districts depicting senior citizens mowing lawns and stripping to pay for their health care under Ryan’s budget. MoveOn.org emailed supporters this week encouraging them to attend Barletta and Meehan’s town halls. And Social Security Works and the Alliance for Retired Americans — advocacy groups for older Americans — plan to hold events in each of the three freshmen Republicans’ districts to highlight their opposition to the vote.

“A lot of us are scratching our heads wondering what there is to be gained from this. None of these folks I considered moderates espoused any of the principles espoused in Ryan’s bill during the election,” said TJ Rooney, former chairman of the state Democratic Party and a former member of the state’s House of Representatives.

Daylin Leach, a Democratic member of the state Senate, said it will be difficult for the new lawmakers to square those votes for the Ryan budget with their moderate-leaning districts in 2012. “The TV commercials are already written; we know what they’re going to say.”

“A lot of people are walking around in this state saying they’ve given us the defining issue of this campaign. Do we end Medicare and do away with safety net and give away tax breaks [to the wealthiest Americans]? In a lot of campaigns it is going to be that simple for the moderates who have put their necks out,” Rooney said.

Democrats are hoping that in districts like Barletta’s — which, at more than 115,000, has one of the highest populations of senior citizens in the state — voters will sour on Republicans once they look at their voting record on Ryan’s budget.

“The national Republicans are trying to create this distinction with the president. It’s a distinction that these new members can’t walk away from. It’s one thing to campaign saying that we’re going to cut, cut, cut, but it’s a whole other thing to cut specific investments that benefit your local community,” said Josh Shapiro, a state assembly member in southeastern Pennsylvania.

At Barletta’s town hall, there were indications that the spending votes could become the defining debate for his first term in Congress. Early in the meeting, a man critical of the tax cuts in Ryan’s plan had to be escorted from the smokey, faded banquet hall by police. A woman interrupted the congressman’s presentation several times to question or criticize him. One retired veteran repeatedly demanded to know why Barletta had voted to cut veteran’s benefits, despite his repeated insistence that he hadn’t taken any such vote.

“Kanjorski was my man,” he told Barletta, “and I want you to be my man, too.”

“It wasn’t unusual,” Barletta said of the town hall. “There’s a lot of bottled up frustration … it was good for me as well as the people there to hear the many different sides. There were people who came from the right who had frustrations, who thought I wasn’t doing enough, who wanted me to stand tough and not increase the debt ceiling, and others who came from the very far left.”

“I would imagine many are going to experience the same thing — frustration from both sides,” he said.

Earlier that day, Meehan ditched the podium at his town hall and stood close to a group of 15 seniors that gathered in a mostly empty gymnasium outside of Philadelphia. No one shouted or lobbed harsh criticism at the congressman — but even in the more subdued setting, he was asked whether he’d be willing to support legislation put forward by Democrats.

“That’s why I do town hall meetings,” Meehan said. “You get an unfiltered sense of where people are at.”

Even with their votes, and the 1.2 million person registration advantage Democrats gained in 2008, Democrats in the state aren’t feeling overly confident about their prospects at winning back seats in 2012. Redistricting, for example, could strengthen Barletta’s Republican constituency. And the state’s insiders describe the soft-spoken Meehan as a good fit for his moderate-leaning district.

Others point to another factor that might give the new lawmakers cover as they take tough votes.

“The ironic thing is that these votes in the House right now are symbolic votes because they aren’t going anywhere,” said Larry Ceisler, a Pennsylvania based Democratic strategist.

“If I’m Joe Congressman from Pennsylvania, I can tell my tea party right wing I voted for them but Democrats in the Senate wouldn’t get it through. When I talk to independents, I say, ‘Look, I’m a moderate; I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. If I thought [the] vote had ramifications, it might have been a different vote.’ That’s the two-step they’re going to do.”