Nearly 10,000 Constituents Tune in to Suozzi’s Telephone Town Hall
Glen Cove, NY-- Almost 10,000 people participated in Congressman Tom Suozzi’s tele-town hall on Thursday evening. Suozzi shared updates from Washington, discussed pressing issues, and took live telephone questions and comments from callers.
In his remarks, Suozzi acknowledged the division that many people are feeling.
“I love our country, and I believe in our country, and I've devoted a large part of my life to public service,” Suozzi said. “Eight years as mayor, eight years as county executive, seven-some-odd years now as a Member of Congress. And this is tough stuff. It's not easy, and this is one of the most dramatic times I've ever experienced in public life.”
He fielded questions on topics ranging from budget cuts to healthcare, the cost of living to the Department of Education, DOGE (Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency) to the partisan divide in Congress. Callers asked about maintaining the balance of power between Congress and the President, protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, cybersecurity, and antisemitism on American campuses.
Suozzi also discussed many of his goals for this year’s congressional session. He listed the following priorities: securing the southern border and passing an immigration reform bill, rescinding the (SALT) State and Local Tax Deduction cap, the need to support Ukraine, and continuing to bring federal dollars in grants and programs to the district.
He noted, though, that much of his time has been spent “pushing back on DOGE, some of the reckless and potentially devastating budget cuts, and the need to protect Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.”
And he repeated his desire to “bring this fractured, divided congress back to working together to solve this country’s most important problems.”
“We have to do the hard work to find common ground and work together where we can,” said Suozzi, “but also fight back when it’s necessary. We have to do both.”
Suozzi closed his remarks with insight into how lawmakers and constituents alike should move forward.
“We only have three tools at our disposal: legislation, litigation, and mobilization…I'll keep on trying to do my best in each of those areas to try and keep pushing forward, and to try and find common ground with the other side, with the people that are reasonable in the Republican Party—of which there are many,” Suozzi concluded. “We’ve got to pick and choose the fights…I think that we have to just keep on pushing and keep on fighting.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Suozzi hosted in-person town halls, often drawing hundreds of constituents. During the pandemic, Suozzi switched to the telephone-town hall format, which
drew thousands. He has chosen to continue this practice in order to reach as many constituents as possible.
Thursday’s telephone town hall follows an in-person budget briefing just five days earlier, on Saturday, March 1st, at Hofstra University. There, Suozzi and Representative Laura Gillen discussed the potentially harmful effects of the partisan budget reconciliation bill passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday, February 25th. They were joined by several guest speakers, including Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health; Julie Tighe, President of New York League of Conservation Voters; Randi Shubin Dresner, CEO of Island Harvest; Stanfort Perry, CEO of AHRC Nassau; and others who addressed how the Republican proposed budget cuts could impact their communities. The event drew over 700 Long Islanders.
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