Ten Things Lawmakers Do
any of which should be grounds for losing their job
I thought about doing a top ten list where these would be
ranked by how bad they were, but then I think all of them are betrayals of the
public trust. There should be
consequences, but the only recourse it seems these same people have left us is
to vote them out of office, and they pretty much rigged that as well.
1) They
gerrymander the districts. I know,
gerrymandering has been around since the early 1800s, but then we still have
laws against prostitution, and that’s the world’s oldest profession. So the prevalence of an activity is not an
indicator of its morality or its legality.
Besides, if prostitutes wrote the laws, do you think prostitution would
still be illegal?
But they can do things now with computers that nobody would
have imagined back then. Districts can
be drawn now by almost any demographic you can think of: voting patterns, age,
race, ethnicity, religion, education level, wealth, government dependency. Districts can and are drawn to maximize or
minimize the voting power of any number of groups, though, of course, everyone
thinks it’s all about political parties.
I’m not so sure. Are all, say,
Democratic voters the same in their eyes?
Perhaps it would be more advantageous to put more poor minority voters
in one district or maybe spread them out over several.
The fact is that districts are put together for the sake of
the political parties and not the voters.
I live in a town of 30,000 people.
For a time, our town was divided into 4 Congressional districts. That has since changed, but you can’t look at
the maps of the Congressional districts in Illinois, or just about any other
state, without seeing clearly that these districts are drawn for political
reasons and not the benefit of the constituents.
The reason that representatives are elected every two years
is to keep them close to and responsive to the people they represent. The Founders saw this as the people’s way to
express their approval or disapproval of the way they were being
represented. All this has essentially
been nullified by creating districts based on voting patterns to favor their
own candidates.
Representative districts should be drawn by people who have
no access to any demographic but where people live. Having any other information available will
only lead to abuse, if not now, certainly in the future.
2) They spend
money they don’t have. They see their
roles as helping people by spending money on them, but they only look at how
much they want to spend and not whether there is any money actually there for
them to spend. But more than just
helping people, they see this as the way to ensure their future. The recipients of these favors become loyal
voters, and that’s the important thing.
3) They make
laws that don’t apply to themselves.
This was seen in full display with Obamacare, where waivers were traded
for votes. This was supposed to be one
of the safeguards that was to prevent Congressmen from corruption: they would
soon return to normal life and live under the laws they made.
4) They make
their own rules. This is similar to the
last one. I have often asked: who makes
the laws for the lawmakers? Who set
their pensions? Who crafted their health plans?
Who decided their pay levels? Who
decides if a law should be debated, and how long? Who decides if the details of a law are made
public before passage of the law?
The majority party in the Senate recently voted to change
the rules so that the minority party couldn’t stop the majority party from
confirming the President’s appointees for various judgeships. Now who was being irresponsible here? The minority party or the majority party? Depends who you ask. But who loses? Ultimately we do.
5) They
essentially exclude third party possibilities.
They would love to have only one political party (their own), but they
will settle for two. But not more than
two. When you have only two, the country
will swing from one to the other as it reacts to the failures of the party in
power. But a viable third party could
force some real change.
Under current election rules, a third party only reduces the
number of votes needed for victory. Which
means actually that a person can win an election without getting a majority of
the vote. In recent years, this has been
more of an advantage to the Democrats rather than to the Republicans, but
changing the rules could lead to some unintended consequences, like neither
Republicans or Democrats winning, so better to leave well enough alone.
What is needed is either to have runoff elections when no
one receives more than half the votes, or in elections with more than two
candidates, voters should be able to rank their choices.
6) They write
bills that people don’t or can’t read.
Our Founders didn’t intend that Representatives had to be lawyers. Just good, decent, smart people who would
serve for a few years and then go back to their regular lives.
The bills are just too big and cumbersome to read. The people who write them don’t want them to
be read. That way people would find out
what is actually in them.
Obamacare was over 2800 pages long; the recent
appropriations bill was over 1500 pages.
We were told we had to pass the bill to find out what is in it. The person who said that should be removed
from office immediately.
Ten Things Lawmakers Do
any of which should be grounds for losing their job Part 2
7) They put too
many things in a bill so that they can’t all be debated. When a bill is 2800
pages long, like Obamacare, how many issues do you think need to be debated or
discussed? I know some of them were discussed
in committees, but if I am the representative of my district, I have a
responsibility to know what I am voting on and to have my questions answered.
This is one reason why the immigration bill is taking so
long. There are too many big issues
involved, but those who are in favor of it want to keep it that way. Why?
8) They put too
many things in a bill so that you have to take the bad with the good. Some people call this necessary
compromises. But they misrepresent the
case, so they can continue their underhandedness.
Why should anyone accept things they don’t like or want, if
there was a way not to do it? The
reason, of course, why they do this is that these matters would not pass on
their own. So they stick it with
something else and hope you either don’t notice it, or you feel you can’t
reject the whole thing just for this one little thing over here.
But then it’s not usually one.
Now this certainly includes earmarks, where, say, someone
puts in funding for a local park in a health care bill, but the intention is to
make the bill as long as possible.
9) And, of
course, they vote on bills they haven’t read.
They may know the major parts of the bill, the broad outline of what the
bill does, but there could be dozens of items they don’t know about or would
rather weren’t there.
10 They then rush
votes on bills to avoid debate and public comment. Everything is always a crisis that requires
immediate action. The debt ceiling
agreement is hashed out the day before the ceiling is reached. Obamacare was passed in the middle of the
night during Christmas week, I believe.
And these people are representing us?
I close with a quote from the Federalist Papers that shows a
little how lawmakers were expected to think.
“(T)he House of Representatives is so constituted as to
support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the
people. Before the sentiments impressed
on their minds by the mode of their elevation can be effaced by the exercise of
power, they will be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to
cease, when their exercise of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend
to the level from which they were raised; there forever to remain unless a
faithful discharge of their trust shall have established their title to a renewal
of it. I will add, as a fifth
circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them
from oppressive measure, that they can make no law which will not have its full
operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the
society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest
bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests
and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples;
but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be asked, what is to restrain the House
of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and
a particular class of the society? I
answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws;
and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of
America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by
it. If this spirit shall ever be so far
debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty.”
Federalist no. 57
