| WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last night, U.S. Representative Mark Pocan (WI-02) joined MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to discuss the pressing issues his constituents and constituents of the 3rd Congressional District asked him about at his town hall last weekend. Pocan held a town hall at the western edge of his district and invited constituents from both sides of the congressional border to attend. Republican leadership has been urging their members not to hold town halls. Pocan felt holding a town hall to lend an ear to all Wisconsinites was essential, specifically on the Republican Rip Off, the massive transfer of wealth from the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class to pay for a $4.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. |
| Click here to watch the full interview, and find excerpts of Rep. Pocan’s remarks below. |
| On Pocan’s Town Hall in Belmont, WI The bare minimum you should do as a Member of Congress is listen to your constituents. Derrick Van Orden, to the best of my knowledge, has never done an open public town hall in the over two years he’s been in office. I just thought people should hear from a Member of Congress, especially if you’re about to cut their Medicaid, their food assistance, education funding, and parts of the Affordable Care Act. We organized one at the edge of my district, knowing that about seven minutes away was a city of 10,000 people in his district. But Rachel, people from two hours away came to hear from a Member of Congress, and if Derrick Van Orden is not going to listen to his constituents, I felt at least I could lend an ear and make sure we’re talking about what Derrick is voting on. He’s voting to cut Medicaid. That’s one out of three kids in Wisconsin. 55% of seniors in nursing homes. It’s some really bad stuff. On the Top Issues at the Town Hall Cuts for Medicaid were huge. That’s health care, long term care for people in Wisconsin, especially in rural parts of Wisconsin, like the Third Congressional district that Derrick Van Orden supposedly represents. People are really concerned about Veterans Affairs, in the VA hospital, because so many people have been fired who are on probationary employment, that when you call you can’t always get an appointment, and that’s starting to affect the service of health care. One issue that wasn’t even part of that Republican budget bill that really rose to the surface was Social Security. On Trump’s & Musk’s Attacks on Social Security You got Elon Musk calling it a Ponzi scheme. You’ve got them [DOGE] cutting employees at Social Security, making it harder to get your benefits. During the the State of the Union, an awful lot of real estate was used by Donald Trump to repeat lies over and over and over again about people over 110 years old, up to 360 years old, supposedly getting Social Security, when even by law, they don’t write a check to anyone over 115 and it’s been disproven by two different inspectors general. That tells a lot of people what they’re really after is Social Security. The biggest set of questions we had on Saturday was about that. |
