Sitting in a town hall meeting with a career politician can seem like the last thing you might want to do as the day winds down on an exceptionally warm and beautiful Thursday afternoon in February. However, those who chose to attend Johnny Isakson's scheduled appearance in the Goodroe Memorial Auditorium on the Dalton State College campus today were not disappointed.
To his credit, Isakson even said it would have been a great day to take advantage of the weather and that they should have probably "put a blanket on the campus and had a picnic."
In spite of the Georgia senator's flexibility in regards to setting, he told the audience he was very rigid in his protocol when it came to town hall meetings, emphasizing that such meetings were for the public's benefit and not a politician's platform.
"This meeting is about me responding to your questions. It's not about me performing or putting on a show and leaving before you get to ask questions. So I'm only going to make remarks briefly, and then I want to turn the floor over to each of you," he said.
And that's just what the senator did, kicking off the town hall meeting with several key points about important issues to Georgians before ceding the floor to those in attendance, as can be seen in the WDNN-TV broadcast of the event.
Key topics and points made during the meeting included the following:
- The Savannah Harbor Project and the 295,600 new jobs on the way because of it.
- Caterpillar's tractor-building company's future move to Savannah from Japan.
- Two additional major projects that Georgia may be awarded, as we made the final cut of contenders.
- The grave mistake Isakson believes took place when Pres. Obama refused to agree to the Keystone Pipeline, which would have given America more energy independence.
Few Georgians would disagree with the need for America to control its own energy needs, especially when it is within its own power to do so--and in light of the possible future hike in gas prices expected relatively soon.
So when Isakson reminded his audience that Canada was willing to run a pipeline into America, providing us with 70,000 barrels of sweet crude daily, as well as employing 20,000 people in the U.S., he stressed how much better for our country that would have been than to continue to be at the mercy of men and countries, like Iran's Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Chavez, for our energy needs.
In light of his comments and the facts on that issue, one can only wonder why the president would take America's energy independence so lightly given the opportunity available to us, especially in light of the fact that every state the pipeline would have traveled through--and every environmental agency for the states impacted--had all "signed off" their approval for the pipeline to move forward.
One audience member expressed his own disgust with the president's decision quite vocally, asking Isakson why senators, who are supposed to have great power in Congress, can't get the president reigned in on issues that adversely affect Americans, like the pipeline.
"They've [the senators] relinquished a lot of their power and control to the president. You should be out with other senators and really explain that you don't like it [the refusal to sign the Keystone Pipeline paperwork]. That you're upset; you're mad as hell and you're not gonna take it anymore," said Mike White.
White went on to complain that citizens should be able to expect their legislators to stop the commander-in-chief from running roughshod over Congress and America's citizens in matters so grave.
Isakson thanked the audience member for participating with a question, but he also pointed out that the senators in the Republican caucus in Congress were in no way rolling over when it came to standing up for their constituents against decisions being made like the pipeline.
He did, however, point out that while Congress was not abdicating its responsibility to constituents,
"The administration has tried to take away advice and consent, which, by the way, is a constitutional requirement of the United States Senate," he explained. And Isakson said the president is doing this by making recess appointments.
Recess appointments are a legal ability of the president, which Isakson pointed out. But the reason they even exist was to provide a president with the ability to continue getting important work done even if Congress was on recess.
The legal option available to the president was never meant to afford any president the ability to usurp or bypass an arm of the government oversight granted by the three-branch system.
While Isakson touched on many different topics today in Dalton, one of the key things many took away from the town hall meeting was the fact that America's Keystone Pipeline loss is now China's gain.
Isakson shared that the Prime Minister of Canada traveled to Beijing last week and the two countries forged a deal of their own for the crude our president refused.
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