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Rep Anna Eshoo

Sunnyvale Sun - Sunnyvale, Mountain View residents participate in U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo's telephone town hall

November 10, 2011

Rep. Eshoo recently held a telephone town hall with residents from Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Alia Wilson, staff writer for the Sunnyvale Sun, reported on the conference call with Eshoo and over 9,000 residents from those towns:

Nearly 9,000 Sunnyvale and Mountain View residents listened in on an hourlong telephone town hall hosted by U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, on Nov. 2, when constituents had the opportunity to ask the congresswoman about the issues affecting country and the Bay Area.

Eshoo has been regularly hosting telephone town halls since 2008. The congresswoman usually calls all the communities in the 14th Congressional District each year.

Some of the topics covered in last week's telephone town hall ranged from Iran and Social Security to the American Jobs Act and health care. Local residents also asked about housing, defense spending, education, the debt and deficit in Washington, D.C., tax breaks for companies, immigration and veterans.

In light of the upcoming elections, Bob, a Sunnyvale resident, commented on campaign finance reform.

"It seems like most certainly national politicians' first job is fundraising and second job is being a politician," he told Eshoo. "I've noticed that over the course of time that any campaign finance reform effort is either blocked or someone finds a loophole, and I know that the money-raising is just driving everyone. I'm wondering if you believe if it's even possible to change the system in some way."

Eshoo criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which prohibits government from censoring political broadcasts in candidate elections when those broadcasts are funded by corporations or unions, saying it essentially gave corporations the same voice as individual citizens.

"There are a lot of issues that take time to mature, and I think the American people are going to have to rise up against this and send a very direct message to whomever is in Congress that this system simply is undemocratic," Eshoo said during the conference. "Can you imagine if the money were taken out of politics, what kinds of decisions would come out of the Congress? You know as well as I do that it would be a far different scenario."

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