Senator Arlen Specter speaks about health care, party switch at Pitt

Senator Arlen Specter, D-Pa., opened his town hall meeting at Pitt yesterday with a pressing issue: his hair.

Once he started balding, “people wrote letters recommending I wear a toupee or shave my head and become a sex symbol,” Specter said.

He joked that his wife was against it and that he “didn’t feel qualified” for sex symbol status.

“People seemed to care more about my hair than my public policy,” he said. And although he made the decision to stay a senator and not a sex symbol, he said he has been working out, lifting weights and “feeling good.”

About 50 students and community members attended the meeting at Alumni Hall. The audience’s major concerns dealt with issues such as universal health care and the senator’s decision to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

One student cited statistics showing the senator’s fluctuation in voting against his former party — in favor of positions typically supported by Democrats — since he was first elected in 1980.

The student asked Specter what the public could expect of his voting, now that Specter is no longer a Republican.

“I was a Republican for many years, but for many years before that, I was a Democrat,” Specter said.

The senator supported Democratic stances on pro-choice policies, workers’ compensation, stem cell research and veteran benefits during his time in the Senate.

He said Vice President Joe Biden urged Specter to vote for the stimulus package and to switch parties. Specter said he has been “doing things for the Obama administration that none of [his] opponents can do.”

“Obama is the captain of our team,” Specter said, calling him “the man in the foxhole.”

An issue of particular tension at the meeting was health care.

The audience questioned the senator about a single-payer plan, in which each person’s health care costs are paid from a single government-related source.

One audience memberasked, “Why don’t you talk about it? Why don’t you discuss it?”

Specter said, “I do talk about it.”

Specter said the single-payer system has “very little” support because people remember former president Bill Clinton’s plan, which “had a lot of bureaucracy.” He said the single-payer plan ought to be on the table, but the “robust” public option has gained more support.

Another attendee asked about Perkins loans, which the federal government provides at low-interest rates to some college students. Because the new program will eliminate entitlements and subsidies, a member of audience asked the senator what he would do about the programs.

Specter said the programs were “good” and that he was committed to them.

He talked about a town hall meeting at Lebanon’s Harrisburg Area Community College campus, where he spoke on Aug. 10. Lebanon’s town hall meetings usually have about 80 attendees, he said. But that day, Specter showed up to find 2,000 citizens — and many were not happy with his record.

During the Lebanon meeting, one citizen said, “God is going to appear before you.” Specter described the meeting as a flashpoint of the country’s current public malcontent.

People were dissatisfied with large companies, Wall Street bailouts and the prospect of spending “a lot of money on global warming,” Specter said.

“I think what we have to do is stand our ground,” Specter said. He said security guards wanted to throw out a man out for yelling, but the senator told them not to.

“I didn’t want the headline to be, ‘Citizen ejected from town hall meeting,’ I wanted the headline to read, ‘Senator keeps his cool,’” Specter said.

The senator said he can’t become flustered in such situations.

“I know this because I have a lot of experience with these confrontations,” Specter said.