Adam Smith Town Hall discusses federal budget, ends with Palestine protest

On March 29, 2025, Rep. Adam Smith gave a town hall focused on the federal budget in Renton, Washington.

The main topic was the GOP budget, how regressive and destructive it is, and how to oppose it.

But the end of the meeting was disrupted by protesters angry at Rep. Smith’s support for arming Israel. See images and videos below.

Rep. Smith staff gave constituents (on their chairs) a flier showing pie charts. The top pie chart said that discretionary funding is 56% of the federal budget of $3.6 trillion; the other 44% is mandatory spending.  The second pie chart showed the breakdown of the discretionary budget.

Budget pie charts (faulty)

That second (lower) pie chart is faulty! First of all, it shows “defense” spending (the light blue area) as visually being about 1/3 of the second pie chart. In fact, “defense” spending is about 51.9% of the discretionary budget, according to Congress’s CRS (Library of Congress) publication Discretionary Spending in 10 Graphs. So, apparently, the pie chart isn’t drawn to scale;  that is what one of Rep. Smith’s staff members suggested after the meeting.  (Maybe they needed more room to show the small percentages spent on various programs on the left. ) Also, a second problem with the second pie chart is that the written percent for “defense” spending is just 16.4%. That’s apparently relative to the total federal budget — which isn’t what you’d expect when looking at the pie chart. I don’t know if these mistakes were an accident or were intentional, as a way to obfuscate the huge Pentagon budget.

Likewise, USAFacts.org says that in 2023, “Approximately half of federal discretionary spending is allocated to defense.”

Furthermore, though the Pentagon budget is “officially” $842 billion, the real annual military budget is about $1.4 trillion, if you include DOE’s nuclear spending, Veterans care, and other military-related spending.

Rep. Smith criticized Signalgate — the accidental inclusion of the editor of The Atlantic in a planning call about the invasion of Yemen. Smith said that there should have been uniformed people — e.g., generals — on the call.   (During the question and answer period someone asked if Congress should have approved the operation. That’s the more important question. And was the operation just and smart?)

Like every GOP budget since Reagan, the current GOP budget lowers taxes for the rich, raises the debt, and cuts programs that benefit the 99%.

Smith leads a bipartisan Congressional caucus for Effective Foreign Assistance, but because Trump nixed foreign aid, Smith wonders if he should close the caucus.

Republican districts are more dependent on Medicaid.

While Smith spent about 15 minutes criticizing Trump and Republicans — rightly so, in my opinion — he spent five minutes or so criticizing the Democrats. “The Dem brand is toxic. Fundamentally broken.” He said both that Dems need to better serve the 99% but also that the Dems need better management of crime, housing, addiction, borders, etc. He criticized the “far left” approach to things. He said there are four main problems:

1. Biggest problem: concentration of wealth. Mostly GOP’s fault, but Dems didn’t offer much of an alternative.   In 1948 the U.S. produced 90% of the world’s manufacturing. It’s been downhill since then.
2. He recommended Ezra Klein’s book Abundance. There’s too much process and regulation. Very expensive to build homes. He told the story about a single-stall public toilet built in California that cost $1.7 million to build, because there were eleven commissions that had a say in its creation.
3. He criticized wokeism, identity politics, and lefty political correctness, which offends much of the public. He said he supports actual Affirmative Action and DEI, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t offend (whites?).  He said that a telling claim about the 2024 election is that if turnout had been higher, Trump would have won by more votes. (Is that due to superior GOP messaging? To Dem incompetence? To Dem support for endless wars. including genocide?)
4. Huge mistake for Biden to run again when he was clearly too old and mentally fragile to do so. That undermined Democratic credibility.

Discussing messaging strategies, Smith said we need various lines of attack. He admires Rep. Al Green for disrupting Trump’s State of the Union speech, but he said he also admires Sen. Elissa Slotkins (boring!) response.  There’s no one size fits all message.  During the question and answer period, a constituent said he thinks the Dems need to concentrate on a single message. Rep. Smith responded by saying we need a narrative about helping the 99%.  (So, it’s just what Bernie Sanders ran on, I say!)

One woman who said she’s a local Indivisible leader  said she would like to hear a detailed organizing plan for fighting MAGA. Rep. Smith said he has no major solutions (and can’t lead); he can criticize from within. He said Dems need to engage with Republican voters and stop treating them as if they’re idiots.

I was one of the people who stood in line to ask a question. My question was: “Rep. Smith, you have criticized management by Democratic governments on the West Coast for issues such as housing, crime, drugs, homelessness, and immigration.  And you recommended finding more efficiency in the Pentagon budget in the area of streamlining requirements and regulations. But aren’t there huge savings to be had in the Pentagon budget? For example, you yourself called the $35 trillion F-35 fighter jet program a ‘rat hole’ program. 60 Minutes had an exposé documenting price gouging by Pentagon contractors (including by Boeing). Brown University’s Costs of War project says that post-9/11 U.S. wars cost $8 trillion.  The Pentagon is a cesspool of waste.  What major savings are available in the Pentagon budget? “

(I failed to mention the 750 overseas bases, or the fact that those post-9/11 U.S. wars killed 4.5 million people, according to the Costs of War project.)

Rep. Smith responded by saying that the country does need to rely more on diplomacy. We should not expect to be able to win a war against China along China’s borders. (But he was a major backer of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.)  Rep. Smith agreed that there’s some waste, as in every program, but he denied that the Pentagon is a cesspool of waste.

Near the end of the allotted time, protesters stood, unfurled a banner “Your Rep Funds Genocide” and started a chant like “Adam Smith, you can’t hide. You are funding genocide.” They chanted “Free, free Palestine”. One woman said “96% of your funding comes from war profiteers. You fund genocide, and you have not done shit.” and talked about Rep. Smith’s funding from AIPAC and military contractors. She said he gives funds via his PAC to 50 other candidates. She said “How dare you?” Smith said “Thank you. Now I want to give others a chance to speak.” The protesters moved to the side and held their sign:

Your Rep Funds Genocide banner

The audience mostly were supportive of the town hall continuing.  The protesters were peaceful.  Two cops watched the events.

The woman below holds her child as she talks about the killing by Israeli Defense Forces of 5 year old Rana Faqih and her family, as described in ABC News’ Killing of 5-year-old girl in Gaza sparks international condemnation as war continues:

The protester speaks first to the audience and, after telling the story of the killing to the audience, she turns to Rep. Smith and calls him “a disgusting villain.” There were boos, cheers, and howls from the audience.

A constituent asks a question

Audience