Over 18,000 On Congressman Peter Roskam's Telephone Town Hall

Over 18,000 people were on Congressman Peter Roskam's telephone town hall on Monday night, according to his communications director.

Patch registered to listen to the call, but was never contacted last night. Roskam’s communications director, David Pasch, apologized for this and said he would look into the matter. Individuals had to register online to be contacted for the call.

Stephanie Arsenty listened into the call on Monday night. Arsenty is an attorney from Lisle who volunteered once at O’Hare International Airport to assist those affected by the president’s executive order on immigration.

Stephanie submitted a question inquiring why Roskam, as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, was not going to push for the release of the president’s tax returns.

“What is the downside, other than harming Trump’s ego?” Arsenty said. Her question was not selected to be answered.

Roskam began the call talking about tax reform and his Illinois tax tour, according to Arsenty.

“The tax code as it is written, all 70,000 pages of it, is indefensible - no one argues in favor of the status quo,” Roskam said in an email on Tueday morning. “We have a real opportunity to make America one of the most attractive places to do business, and position American companies to compete on the world stage.

“I found that a lot of the more aggressive questions were coming from women,” Arsenty said that Roskam took several challenging questions, but she said he didn’t answer them directly

“He sort of skirted around the issue, he avoided the issue,” Arsenty said of Roskam’s responses to questions about the president and the divisive political environment.

Arsenty said Roskam expressed his steadfastness in his beliefs and did not seem affected by

“He said the layout of the travel ban was inartful, that’s about as tough as he got on Trump,” Arsenty said.

“He gets to pick and choose the questions in this format,” Arsenty said. “If I were in a town hall meeting I could just go up to the microphone.”

Multiple requests to Roskam’s local and Washington D.C. office for comment about the telephone town hall meeting were not answered.

Some people expressed their thoughts about the call on Facebook:

Rep. Peter Roskam's video sent out Tuesday morning, via Youtube.

Roskam is a Republican who represents the Illinois 6th Congressional district, which includes Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Downers Grove, Lisle, northeastern Naperville, Barrington and Palatine.

If you were on the call, please share your thoughts below or email me at patrick.martin [at] patch.com.

Photo from Rep. Peter Roskam's website.