GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Rep. Justin Amash, facing a friendly crowd of constituents and supporters, cast a wide net of blame for what ails politics in Washington, D.C., during remarks at his first town hall meeting of the year.
While largely casting himself as a pragmatic problem-solver willing to work with Republicans and Democrats alike, Amash blamed congressional leaders, President Barack Obama and politics-as-usual for near-constant gridlock on pressing issues.
The roughly hour-long town hall meeting Wednesday evening at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum touched on a range of topics, from the nation's $16 trillion debt to immigration.
Amash's points were frequently punctuated by applause and, after he made wry jokes about the state of the nation's finances, laughter.
It was perhaps the most recent problems bedeviling the nation's capital that grabbed the most audience intrigue, such as the outcome of fiscal cliff negotiations earlier this month and an upcoming fight on spending cuts and the nation's debt limit.
"There are two parties here," Amash told reporters after the event. "There's a systematic problem in Washington, D.C., that we need to look at. It's not right for one side to blame the other for all this dysfunction."
Amash pointed to his propensity for explaining all his votes on his Facebook page as a way he manages to be different.
"People can decide for themselves whether I'm independent or whether I'm continuing the same kind of rhetoric that the rest of the party is doing," Amash said.
The town hall started with some 20 minutes of remarks by Amash, who touched on anything from his newly redrawn district to what he said is the need for vast federal spending cuts.
Another 40 minutes were spent fielding questions from members of the 200-plus strong audience.
Pressed for specific cuts or changes by one audience member, Amash said he wanted to reform Social Security and Medicare. He also called the nation's defense budget "bloated."
"There are missions that we probably shouldn't be on," said Amash, who last month signed a bipartisan letter with 13 other lawmakers calling for defense spending cuts.
"There are probably wars that we should not be fighting," he added, later pointing to Afghanistan as an example.
Other audience members brought up Amash's ouster from the prominent House Budget Committee in early December.
House Speaker John Boehner booted Amash and several other Republican lawmakers from prime committee seats because they too often broke with party leaders on key votes.
Amash, speaking to reporters after the event, contended he can still remain an effective congressman without his seat on the budget panel.
"It's always valuable to be on a committee. I'm not going to say that it's not valuable to be on a committee," Amash said. "But the changes you can make in committee will depend on how flexible the chairman is and what the topic is."
Amash flatly rejected the assertion he had gained a reputation for being a divisive congressman. Critics have pointed to Amash's reported role last week in a mini-coup against Boehner's reelection to that post.
Just days after voting against contentious legislation to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, Washington media outlets reported Amash helped spearhead the failed coup.
Critics, including MLive readers, chided Amash for this, saying the move betrayed a lack of maturity on his part and was needlessly divisive.
Amash disagreed, instead pointing to Congress's roughly 10 percent approval rating as indicative of public discontent with party leaders because, he said, leadership "controls the agenda."
"It's pretty clear that the public doesn't agree with the way things are going from either party, and when you have a town hall like this and you can see I took questions openly, I didn't screen anyone," Amash said.
"You can see the public is much more openly supportive of my position than leadership in both parties right now," he said.
In any case, Amash's message seemed to resonate with the crowd.
Mary Milanowski, 72, said after the town hall that Amash is "your everyday person out there, attempting to do a job."
Milanowski, of Grand Rapids, said she feels Amash is doing his best wading through the muck.
"This scares the hell out of me," Milanowski said of ongoing fiscal deliberations in Washington.
"We've been trying to tell people for a long time that we're spending way too much money," she said, "and nobody seems to know how to stop."
