LEBANON, Pa.–Jeers and taunts drowned out Democrats calling for a health care overhaul at town halls Tuesday, and one lawmaker said a swastika was spray-painted at his office as debate turned to noisy confrontation over President Barack Obama's plan. The president himself was treated more respectfully.
"You'll be gone, by God the bureaucrats will still be here," one man told Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., at a town hall in Lebanon, Pa.
"If they don't let us vent our frustrations out, they will have a revolution," Mary Ann Fieser of Hillsboro, Mo., told Sen. Claire McCaskill at her Missouri health care forum.
McCaskill admonished the rowdy crowd of some 1,500.
"I don't understand this rudeness," she said. "I honestly don't get it."
The bitter sessions underscored the challenge for the administration as it tries to win over an increasingly skeptical public on the costly and far-reaching task of revamping the nation's health care system. Desperate to stop a hardening opposition, the White House created a Web site to dispel what it says are smears, and House Democrats set up a health care "war room" out of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office to help lawmakers handle questions.
Obama answered his critics indirectly. At his town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., he urged Americans to ignore those who try to "scare and mislead the American people," telling a cordial audience, "For all the scare tactics out there, what is truly scary is if we do nothing."
Though his popularity is slipping in polls, Obama himself is repeatedly trying to make the case to the public for passage of comprehensive legislation this year to bring down costs and extend coverage to many of the 50 million uninsured.
Obama's questions bore no resemblance to what Specter got.
At a crowded community college in Pennsylvania, Specter heard from speaker after speaker who accused him of trampling on their constitutional rights, adding to the federal deficit or allowing government bureaucrats to take over health care.
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