Mike Uehlein

Just under half of House and Senate Republicans are holding town hall meetings this summer, but Democratic jobs activists say it’s not enough. “They’re holding a lot fewer” than in 2009, says Michael Uehlein, spokesman for the American Dream Movement.

Progressives are showing up at the offices of lawmakers to demand that Congress focus more on jobs and less on federal spending. Uehlein said that his group has already held 75 jobs protests at GOP offices.

But liberals protested outside of events if they couldn’t get in and ask questions, demanding that Congress focus its attention on the economy and issue legislation focused on jobs.

“I think its been a good month,” said Michael Uehlein, spokesperson for the American Dream Movement, a liberal coalition hoping to rival the tea party. “There were hundreds of protests across the country, more than one hundred lawmakers hearing directly from their constituents about jobs, which is what needs to be talked about.”

Union leaders and labor scholars don’t think Walker’s move to crush the union is about the deficit.

“Denying people’s rights has nothing to do with the budget,” said Michael Uehlein [with] the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Uehlein views Walker’s proposal as “an excuse to go after his political enemies” and “the first step that will lead to drastically reduced wages across the state.”

However, the AFL-CIO isn’t changing its criticism that Miller-Meeks “wants to risk Social Security on the stock market.”

“Miller-Meeks can bob-and-weave around the position all she wants, but Iowans want straight answers,” said AFL-CIO spokesman Michael Uelein. “Dave Loebsack has promised to protect Social Security. Miller-Meeks has changed her position so many times that we can’t be sure where she stands.”

The Iowa mailers are going directly to union members, rather than the general public.

“Reason being that they see it as a communication from a trusted source, their union, that they want to read, rather than random piece of mail like the general public sees it,” said Michael Uehlein, field communications director for the Iowa AFL-CIO. “So union members spend much more time reading pieces, and retain more information from them, than the general public does.”