The long-term congressman was also pleasantly surprised to see that around 60 mostly elderly Seattle residents took the time to show up at the meeting at the Magnolia Community Center on what turned out to be sunny Saturday afternoon.
"I didn't figure anybody would be here," McDermott smiled.
He stopped smiling, though, when he began to talk about what has been happening in the other Washington.
"This (last) session has been one of the most unusual sessions in the history of politics," McDermott said.
Following decades of deficit spending, Congress was suddenly faced with what to do with a projected $5.6 trillion surplus, he said. The trouble was that the surplus figure was based on fiscal assumptions not everyone agreed with, according to McDermott.
"Some of us were not so optimistic about how much money there really was," he said.
There were three proposals for what to do with the windfall: cut taxes, pay down the national debt or pay back IOUs in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. The government has borrowed money from both trust funds in the past to balance the budget, McDermott said.
"That's how we got away with the deficit all those years," he added. "The majority wanted tax cuts."
However the budget numbers started to drift down, the budget went from a $5.6 trillion surplus to a $1 trillion deficit by the end of the year, the congressman said.
The reversal, McDermott said, was caused partly by the tax cuts, which benefited mostly the wealthy, partly by a collapsing economy and partly by the country's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"Nine-eleven is being blamed by some people for all our problems," he said.
To be sure, McDermott conceded, the travel industry took a major hit when people stopped flying, but he also noted the war in Afghanistan is costing taxpayers $1 billion a month.
McDermott was also critical of President George Bush's attitude that if people do not agree with the war on terrorism then they are against the country.
"I was appalled," the congressman said of Bush's State of the Union address, which McDermott said consisted mostly of "rah, rah, war-mongering."
McDermott said he is "absolutely not" in favor of invading Iraq, as Bush has proposed.
"If we say we can go anywhere and stamp on somebody, what moral authority does the country have?"
He also slammed the Patriot Act, which gives the government the authority to drop constitutional guarantees of due process if someone is suspected of being a terrorist.
"We may rue the day we did that," McDermott said, comparing the Patriot Act to the communist witch-hunts of the 1940s.
He pointed to the Somali grocer in south Seattle whose entire inventory was seized by the government as an example of what can happen. "You'd better hope no one accuses you of anything," McDermott warned the audience.
The congressman also said he wanted a provision included in the bill to end the Patriot Act after two years, but Congress instead settled on a five-year sunset clause.
McDermott also addressed the issue of Medicare and a proposed prescription-drug benefit. The average senior citizen in America spends an average of $2,500 a year for pharmaceuticals.
"If we decide to give everybody the same benefit, it's going to be very expensive," he said.
The cost for a Medicare drug benefit will be in the range of $400 billion during the next 10 years, said McDermott, who also noted that the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation will be reaching retirement age this decade.
McDermott believes some sort of drug-benefit bill will be passed because an election year is coming up,[[In-content Ad]]
