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The backlash that some Republican members of Congress are facing in town hall meetings over their 2012 budget proposal rings a familiar bell.

In August 2009, Democrats across the country faced rowdy, YouTube-worthy protesters as they tried to sell the health care plan.

As Republican members take to the road during their two-week break from Congress to try and sell the budget proposal crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, they are facing similar questions, though the outcry thus far has not yet escalated to the level that their Democratic counterparts faced. [That’s because these are REAL PEOPLE complaining, not put-up jobs sponsored by Koch Brothers and the Republicans]

Americans are particularly concerned, and somewhat confused, about the proposal to overhaul Medicare, a central feature of the Wisconsin congressman's proposal.

"What you're doing with this Ryan budget is you're taking Medicare and you're changing it from a guaranteed health care system to one that's a voucher system where you throw seniors ... on the mercy of for-profit insurance companies," railed one attendee at a town hall held by Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Penn.

In New Hampshire, Rep. Charlie Bass heard similar complaints.

"This is just salt in the wound," a constituent told the freshman Republican.

Ryan, who has emerged as the GOP's leader on budget issues, himself hasn't been immune. At one town hall meeting last Tuesday, the House Budget committee chairman was booed after getting into a brief confrontation with one attendee about income equality and the middle class.

Republicans argue that the overall tone of the town halls is calm, with the exception of some isolated incidents, and that the town halls are much more civil than what Democrats encountered a year and a half ago. [Of COURSE they're more civil; real people are more civil than those sent in specifically to cause disruption!]

Barletta's town hall last week turned rowdy and one person had to be escorted out after a woman raised the Medicare issue.

"I don't think there's any comparison to 2009 at all," Barletta's communications director, Shawn Kelly, told ABC News. "We have not seen similar reaction, and the rowdiness that took place was directed at people who were disrupting the meeting and not letting the congressman answer the question. It was not directed over the Ryan plan or the proposed Medicare plan." [F L A T O U T L I E ...see videos]

Democrats themselves blame the rowdiness of the 2009 town halls to Republican hecklers and operatives who they say were behind the wave of angry protestors. Now, they are seizing on the discontent on the other side, and strategists say liberal lawmakers should use the opportunity to tout their own deficit reduction plans. [But I don't hear strategists instructing constituents to disrupt the town halls, complete with instructions...]

"What you're seeing is an awakening, so to speak, of the majority of Americans who are now concerned about the budget priorities of the Republican Party," said Donna Brazile, a Democratic political strategist and interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. "This attempt by Republicans to cut the deficit on the backs of seniors and middle-class Americans is producing the same level of backlash that we saw last year when people took to town hall meetings to express their disapproval of the health care bill."

In an ABC News poll released this week, 65 percent of Americans said they opposed changing Medicare to a system in which the government would give older Americans vouchers with which to buy private insurance.

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