Quick summary of constituent meeting with Rep. Rodney Davis, May 9, 2017

Well, folks, never let them tell you that the system doesn’t work. If you can take a half-day off work and stand in a five-hour line, you and seven strangers can spend 10 minutes asking your congressman whatever you want.

I went to Congressman Rodney Davis’ open office hours today. Several people and the News-Gazette put the crowd at 200–250, and that seems about right to me. We signed up for ten-minute timeslots, waited our turn, and were ushered in to see him in groups of three to seven people. He went well after his scheduled end time, but plenty of people couldn’t stay the day and didn’t get the chance to talk to him.

During my group’s session I asked the congressman if he believed Sally Yates was telling the truth when she said she had warned the White House that Michael Flynn was compromised by his connections to Russia and Turkey. I’ll admit this was a loaded question, but it wasn’t rude. Right out of the gate, first question down the pike, he said “Was she under oath?” I responded: “Was she, Congressman?”

I don’t feel like we set a good tone. For those of you who don’t know me personally, this isn’t my MO.

Long story short, Davis has no reason to believe that Sally Yates is lying, because she was under oath after all, and thinks it was right to fire Flynn. That it took 18 days? No big deal. Should he have been hired in the first place? Knowing what we know now, of course not. Would Davis have trusted Obama when he told Trump to not hire Flynn in the first place? It’s good that Flynn was fired. What should congress be doing in light of the fact that Trump hired someone like this? Let the congressional investigations run their course. But we have results of an investigation on this topic; Trump hired Flynn; should Trump have hired him in the first place?

At this point, we learned that the congressman doesn’t do hypotheticals. We also learned that if a person suggests that voting on the American Health Care Act without a CBO score on the MacArthur Amendment and other changes is a darn big hypothetical, he disagrees. Pretty stridently.

I know that’s a really specific case. But keep it in your pocket, should you ever need it.

The rest of the group saved me from myself after that. They covered several things very well. They weren’t skimming the surface; these were deeply thought out and researched questions. The Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act? He’s never heard of it. Town halls? Bad. Even though your constituents want them? If my constituents don’t like it, they can hold me accountable in 2018.

Concerns that the AHCA shifts way too much money from marginalized communities to the ultra-wealthy? Competition, premiums will go down, and we’ll all save money. But 17 million people being dropped from Medicaid; they’re going to buy insurance because premiums are down? We want to move people off Medicaid. Don’t we all, Congressman, don’t we all.

At that point, we were done. He said he had to go to the bathroom and left.