VIDALIA — Concerns about health care reform dominated Sen. David Vitter’s town hall meeting in Vidalia Wednesday.

While national topics dominated the meeting, Vitter said the constituents present could set the course of the discussion.

“The agenda is whatever you want it to be, whatever is on your heart and whatever you think I need to be focused on in the U.S. Senate,” Vitter said.

Vitter said the list of concerns for the last few months has been health care, and when he returns to Washington, D.C., Tuesday the debate will immediately resume.

He is concerned the new bill will dramatically increase costs, and will do so to the detriment of existing programs like Medicare, Vitter said.

“I think that is downright wrong,” he said. “I think that it is downright generational theft from seniors and Medicare to pay for new (programs).”

When Dr. John White asked Vitter if he had worked with the state legislature and the secretary of health and human resources about the impact health care reform would have on rural hospitals, Vitter said he was concerned.

“How are (rural hospitals) going to handle this cut they are going to get in Medicaid, and the largess they are going to get from people who have to move from Medicare to Medicaid?,” White said.

Vitter said he believed health care facilities in rural areas would be the hardest hit by cuts to those particular entitlement programs.

The health care debate is not yet over, and Vitter said he would oppose it to the end.

“If this Obamacare bill passes into law, there will be a serious constitutional challenge to it in the courts,” he said.

“The court could say various provisions are unconstitutional and strike it down, but I don’t want to depend on that in stopping the bill because there is no assurance of that.”

Tanning salon owner Ryan Paul asked Vitter if there was a chance the provision proposing a 10-percent tax on tanning beds could still be removed from the bill. The original proposed tax was on cosmetic surgery, Paul said.

“They basically said it was a discrimination issue against women, but I don’t see how it changed a whole lot because 90 percent of my customers are women,” Paul said.

The provision could still be pulled out, but Vitter said he had no way of knowing as the compromise bill between the House and Senate versions of the healthcare overhaul is being crafted behind closed doors.

“I’m not let in that room, and the public and C-SPAN isn’t allowed in that room either,” he said.

“The president promised a new era of transparency, and it is just the opposite.”

Another constituent asked Vitter how congressional officials could have even read the health care reform bill they voted on, considering the bill was more than 2,000 pages long, Vitter said he has — with the help of staffers — read the bill.

“It is particularly outrageous that we are asked to vote for something, sometimes only 12 hours after it is made available on the Internet,” Vitter said.

When William Coleman asked the senator if there was a chance things could be reversed if in the future the Democratic Party lost its supermajority in Congress, Vitter said yes, but not easily.

“The practical answer in the real world is it is easier said than done, Vitter said.

“If they were to pass this healthcare bill, we would need 60 votes in the future to undo it.”

Health care wasn’t the only issue discussed at the meeting, and more than one constituent asked what Congress was doing to encourage the use of coal- and natural gas-based fuels.

The biggest hurdle coal development faces is cap-and-trade and other climate change-based legislation, Vitter said.

“I call it ‘cap and tax,’” Vitter said.

“I think it is on extremely shaky ground as far as science, and I think it will cost more jobs in the long run.”

Instead, Vitter said he supported being more aggressive with the United States’ domestic natural resources.

“We are the only industrial country that takes 95 percent of (our resources) and puts it off limits under the law,” he said.

Opening up more energy resources to development would actually create more federal revenue, Vitter said.

Other constituents asked about the proposal before Congress to raise the national debt ceiling.

“Everyone out here is tightening our belts, but government keeps growing and growing,” attendee Craig Sewell said.

That government growth also happened under Republicans, Sewell said.

“Certainly there have been spending increases under Republicans, but I don’t think there is any comparison with what has happened in the last year,” Vitter said.

The senator likened the Congressional spending situation to trying to dig your out of a hole.

“To me, the No. 1 rule is when you’re in a hole, stop digging,” Vitter said. “It seems like they have traded in shovels this year for backhoes.”

Addressing a local issue, Vitter said he has been working with local leadership to help complete the four-laning of U.S. 84.

“This is a kind of a ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ issue,” Vitter said.

“The feds look at the ridership and traffic and population to justify putting money in, but we need to get the capacity to build up the population.”