Mike Flood’s rough Town Hall in Columbus

Debt, taxes and DOGE

On Mar. 18, about 200 people attended a town hall meeting in Columbus, Neb., held by Nebraska Representative, Mike Flood (R). Flood won reelection on Nov. 5 with 60.1 percent majority, which is higher than his 58.1 percent in the last election. This was his first in-person town hall meeting for the year and it did not go as well as he planned. 

Flood made it clear from the start that he was there to listen to the audience of all sides and stated the importance of lowering the national debt. The debt is currently over 36 trillion dollars and has been greater than GDP for about a decade. The amount of debt is staggering and can eventually lead to America struggling to pay off the interest on the debt. The idea of lowering the debt is great and many Americans can agree that lowering the debt is a good thing. However, the management of lowering the national debt is controversial. Within the first few minutes of the town meeting, Mike Flood was met with booing and chants of “tax the rich.”  Previously, Flood brought up the idea of taxing the rich as a bad idea. He mentioned how Joe Biden's plan of taxing millionaires would generate 50 billion dollars per year in taxes but it would hurt the economy. He did not elaborate on how it would hurt the economy; secondly, he did not state why it would be more beneficial to get that tax dollars from the poor. His motion for dismissing the tax on the rich was because it was too small compared to the national debt. One of the most unpopular stances Flood took was his support to Trump, Elon and DOGE. A question from the audience asked if Flood supports Elon despite a conflict of interest in Elon since his companies receive billions of dollars from the government. Instead of addressing the concern, Flood decided to point toward DOGE as necessary in driving down the national debt. There were some points at which the crowd cheered for him. He cited that he is for supporting Ukraine and agreed that the meeting between Zelensky and Trump went poorly. He proceeded to get booed when he mentioned that Zelensky should have signed the minerals deal. Mike Flood is planning to lead more town meetings and one of them will be held in Lincoln before September. 

By: Stuart Cuateco