At raucous town halls, Republicans have faced another round of anger over health care

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The long August congressional recess, which Republicans hoped would begin a conversation about tax reform and must-pass budget measures, has so far seen another round of angry town halls focused on President Trump and the stalled effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Over just one day, in three small towns along Georgia’s Atlantic coastline, Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-Ga.) spent more than four hours answering 74 questions, many of them heated. Just three focused on tax reform; nearly half of all questions focused on health care.

“We did our job in the House,” Carter said at the top of a town hall at Brunswick’s College of Coastal Georgia. “It got over to the Senate, and it hit a stumbling block there. Now it’s in their court, and they need to get something done. Folks, we’re not giving up.”

Carter’s town halls — he is hosting nine total, more than any member of the House — mirrored what was happening in swing and safe Republican districts across the country. The failure of the repeal bill kick-started a tax reform campaign, backed by Republican leaders and pro-business groups, who have booked millions of dollars in TV ads to promote whatever might lead to an “uncomplicated” tax code.

In the first spots, paid for by the American Action Network, a laid-off steelworker worries that without “lower taxes for working families,” more jobs will be “lost to China.” At rallies and forums in several states, Americans for Prosperity has pitched tax reform as a way to “unrig the economy.” And in a polling memo made public this week, the AAN found 65 to 73 percent of voters responding favorably to reform if it was pitched as a way to “restore the earning power” of the middle class and “save billions of dollars per in year on tax preparation services.”

But at town-hall meetings since the start of the recess, tax reform has hardly come up; health care has dominated. At a Monday town hall in Flat Rock, N.C., Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) pitched a plan to devolve ACA programs to the states, then found himself fending off constituents who backed universal Medicare.

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