Georgia's members of Congress, returning home from Washington after months of partisan bickering, are getting an earful.
At town hall meetings across the state, they're hearing, sometimes in-your-face, that people are fed up with the political gridlock that many associate with the debt ceiling mess, the downgrading of the nation's credit rating and the tanking of the stock market.
For the most part, the barbs are leveled at those-boneheads-in-Washington rather than the guy at the front of the room -- but not always.
Chuck Haley's "incredible frustration" with Washington politics drove him to speak out at Rep. Paul Broun's town hall meeting Tuesday in northeast Georgia. The banker was also upset that Broun voted against the debt-ceiling deal rather than compromise.
"Washington is out of control," Haley, 49, told the Republican congressman, then added: "A no vote is not always the vote that will bring change."
The mood at a handful of town hall meetings attended by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution bore out a recent New York Times/CBS News poll that showed 82 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.
"What is being done to get the housing market back on track and get millions of people back to work?" Patti Ward, of Greensboro, asked Broun. Her son is a home builder in Henry County.
"We didn't send you guys up there to Washington to take 10 years to cut the budget," said Gene Smith, 70, a bank facilities coordinator. "You all don't seem to want to cut the spending."
Another recent poll, by CNN/Opinion Research, found American voters uncharacteristically fed up with their individual representatives, as well as with Congress as an institution. Only 41 percent of those surveyed said their own representative should be re-elected.
But in Georgia at least, the town halls seemed to draw the hometown faithful, who, while disgusted with Washington, smiled on their own representatives.
Jim and Lucinda Spicer arrived early and sat front row and center at Broun's meeting at the Plaza Arts Center in Eatonton. The senior citizens like to watch Fox News. They support abolishing the federal income tax in favor of a sales tax, and they regret, Lucinda said, that "this is not the country we grew up in."
They support Broun and the tea party. "I'm one of them," said Jim, a retired farm equipment salesman.
Many in the the crowd of about 100 people cheered when Broun defended his vote against the debt ceiling deal.
Republican Rep. Tom Graves also received cheers for his vote against the deal at his town hall meeting Monday in northwest Georgia. And Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, received no flack for his vote against the deal during a town hall meeting at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Despite the undercurrent of anger, these gatherings lacked the yelling and finger-pointing that marked public meetings in 2009 about the health care overhaul. Occasionally, though, people turned up the heat.
Ginnie Sams, a retiree from Rising Fawn, stepped to the microphone in Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School to confront Graves.
"I completely disagree with you that jobs are a zero-sum game, and that if we start drastically cutting back on the government, that those jobs miraculously appear in the private sector," said the retired insurance industry worker. "If we start slashing, decimating the government, laying off government workers, cutting government contracts, that ... affects businesses like Lockheed, which rely on those government contracts."
Terry Erwin, a retired auto mechanic from Catoosa County, also took issue with key GOP tenets.
“It seems like every time we get a recession or an upset in the economy, it is always middle-class America that suffers,” he said. “And the Republicans say, ‘We can’t raise taxes on corporate America -- the very rich -- because of the fact that it would be punishing them’ when, actually, they have made more money this year than they ever have in history."
A common theme was worry about the future.
"I think we're in trouble. I really do," said Beverly Rice, 54, an educator with the Atlanta Public Schools who attended Lewis' town hall. "I think people are concerned at this point because of the economy. There doesn't seem to be any resolve to it."
Lewis' meeting, attended by about 300 people Monday, focused mainly on redistricting. But Mary Anne Gaunt, a Georgia State University administrator, had other concerns, as well.
"I'm disappointed in the partisanship and the bickering that goes on," she told a reporter. Lewis, she added, "is part of it in that he's part of that culture. ... I'm afraid that there's nobody in Washington right now who seems to have the voice and the will of the people in mind in changing that culture of animosity."
Bill Kelley, a Vietnam veteran from Tifton in south Georgia, attended a town hall meeting Tuesday sponsored by Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss.
Afterward, Kelley, who addressed the senators about his concern over the nation's debt, reflected on the relatively subdued tenor of the crowd.
"People here are more genteel, more Christian," Kelley said. "But if you talk to them more, there's a lot of seething."
Staff writers Aaron Edwards and Jim Galloway contributed to this report.
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