My town hall meetings are with friends and neighbors, fellow Americans. We engage.

So, for me the town hall meetings are really an opportunity to engage in two-way dialogue with people, and they've been very helpful.

Most of my town hall meetings had always been love fests, and some of my guys used to complain: 'I'd like for somebody to yell at you a bit.'

We've had Town Hall meetings, we've witnessed election after election, in which the American people have taken a position on the President's health care bill. And the bottom line is the people don't like this bill. They don't want it.

Like my colleagues, I did about 10 to 15 town hall meetings on this issue; and what I found is people came with a sincere interest to learn, a sincere interest to cut through the rhetoric and understand how this Medicare bill impacts them in their daily lives.

We are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I've got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would respectfully submit you're not listening to them.

You know, when we get to a point in this country where dissent is extremism, we've turned, I think, a very dark page in our history. And I don't want us to go there. I encourage Americans and I'm - right now, to go to these town hall meetings, to - to talk to your Congressmen, the people that you elected.

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