Why Not Try "Cash For Real Change"?

Over the past 12 months we have seen unfettered spending out of Washington D.C.. The reasoning for the fiscal recklessness has been attributed to the declining economy. The “drunken sailors” in our nation’s capital believe that the best way to stave off a recession is to spend our tax dollars on a myriad of government programs to spur economic recovery. They have bought into this misguided notion to the point of quadrupling our budget deficit, but yet our economy still lags. They have bailed out banks, automobile manufacturers, and labor unions. They have spent more than $1.5 trillion dollars over and above any budgetary spending and have proposed spending another $4 trillion in next year’s budget along with at least another $1 trillion in deficit spending.

Along with their disastrous economic policies, the politicians are trying to further hamstring our economy with an ill-advised “Cap and Trade” plan. The plan will in effect cause the price of energy, which is your gas and/or electric bill for the government Kool-Aid drinkers, to skyrocket. Not only will your energy bill dramatically increase, but also the cost of virtually every product or service that you currently buy. To put it simply, after you spend more money to heat/cool and light your house, you will have to spend more to buy food, drive to pick up the food, and clean up after your food is consumed. The House of Representatives passed this bill with an overwhelming public outcry against it.

The self-proclaimed smartest people in the world are trying to pass a “Health Care Reform” bill that will bankrupt private insurance, raise all of our health care costs, decrease the quality of health care, and help struggling labor union’s retirement accounts. Again they press on in the face of overwhelming public opposition.

The American public has grown weary of politicians who pass legislation without reading the bill, which they did for a massive stimulus bill passed earlier this year. The voters have educated themselves on what the legislation actually says and have begun to demand answers from their elected representatives. Recent polls by Rasmussen Reports shows that 57% of voters would like to replace every member of both houses of Congress, while 42% of those polled believe that just randomly picking names out of the phone book would be more productive than the current Congress. Public opinion is showing that very few members of Congress, regardless to which political party they belong, are safe in their re-election bids next year. Those numbers will drop even further if Congress passes their freedom limiting Health Care bill.

I have a proposal to replace every member of Congress, even those in the Senate who are not up for re-election in next year’s midterm elections. I propose “Cash for Real Change”. I think we should pay every member of Congress $1 billion to leave Washington immediately and never return. The $535 billion it would cost pales in comparison to the more than $1.5 trillion this Congress has already spent. I think we should then replace the new billionaires with citizen legislators that have never served in political office at any capacity. Before the new Congress can begin any legislative work, they will attend classes on the Constitution. The classes will not try to decide what the founding fathers intended or what they would have done if they lived in 2009, the classes will concentrate on what the Constitution actually says. After the new Congress understands what their duties and responsibilities are under the Constitution, they will now begin to undo the constitutional damage the current crop of political reprobates have done.

Hypocrisy Reigns Supreme In Washington DC

In September of 2008, the Federal government orchestrated an $85 billion bailout of the insurance company American International Group, better known as AIG. The move was part of an effort to shore up the faltering financial sector. At the time, conservatives blasted the bailout as an expensive, foolish, and meddling experiment to “fix” the economy. Now that 6 months have passed since the initial round of bailouts, we can plainly see the folly of such an experiment. To make matters worse, AIG has just paid out millions in bonuses to many of their executives. This obviously touched off a flurry of hearings and press conferences in Washington D.C. to enable the politicians to feign their moral outrage over the payment of bonuses.

The news out of DC this week has been a constant drumbeat of anger, and calls for the names of the executives to be made public. The House has even voted to tax the bonuses at an outrageous rate of 90%. As a side note, does anyone honestly believe that Congress will stop at the selective bonuses of these executives? When does Congress ever abolish a tax? They more often than not simply expand the tax to include more taxpayers. When Congressman Barney Frank pompously pontificated about his desire to make the names of those receiving bonuses public, AIG CEO Ed Liddy responded by cautioning Frank about the danger of publicizing the names. He then read a couple of recorded death threats aimed at the executives of AIG, to which the “omniscient” Frank replied that he would take it under advisement. Sadly, for Frank and many other politicians, the visions of headlines cloud the very real possibility of bodily injury to the executives.

The hypocrisy of the politicians reigns supreme in Washington. Last month, the “stimulus” bill was pushed through Congress without any chance for real debate. It was rushed through so hurriedly, that the majority of Congress did not even have the chance to read it. Maybe if they had read the bill, they would have noticed a small addition to the bill that stated that any contractual bonuses that were promised before February 11 of this year, would be allowed to be paid out. Who added this tiny amendment to the bill? Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut was the author of the amendment. Please allow another side not here as well. The 2 top recipients of campaign donations from AIG last year were Senator Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama. Dodd admitted that he had added the amendment to the bill, but that an administration official had applied pressure to ensure that it did get added to the final version of the bill. So Congress passes a bill that specifically allows these bonuses to be paid, and then when it becomes public knowledge that the bonuses are being paid, the same congressman arrogantly declare their moral outrage.

The White House was questioned about how could they allow these bonuses to be paid out. Their response was that the Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, had only learned of the bonuses last week and was working to prevent them from being paid. The truth is that Geithner had known for at least 2 weeks, and AIG had been working with Federal officials for at least the past 3 months on these very same bonuses. Either the Federal government does not pass along information to the Treasury Secretary, or they knew about it and waited for it become public knowledge to milk every last ounce of political capital out of the outrage that they created.

President Obama was elected on a platform of hope and change. He swept into office with the promise to reform Washington and to work on a bipartisan basis to save the economy. This “crisis” was a manufactured crisis to allow the government to feign their surprise and anger to snatch more of our freedom away from us. One other piece of news released this week that has gotten little to no coverage was that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are poised to pay out their own share of bonuses to their top executives. Will Congress and the White House put on just as big of a show for these 2 government-controlled agencies? If the past 6 weeks have shown us anything, they have shown us that the mantra of “Hope and Change” should be changed to “Hypocrisy and Cronyism”.

Don't Let Congress Turn The Auto Industry Into Another Amtrak

Since early September, when the political elite in Washington informed us of the dire need to bailout the financial markets, we have see a building tide of industries, states, and even cities clamoring for their version of a bailout from the federal government. The “experts” in Congress promised us, that the bailout would shore up the financial markets and we would all be better off. Now that the markets have continued to drop, congressional leaders response is that we need to bailout more companies.

Representative Barney Frank was asked when the bailouts would stop and his response was as confusing as the clamor for government bailouts. Frank claimed that the bailouts would stop when they stopped working. Maybe Mr. Frank has been too busy with his reelection campaign to notice that the bailout has not worked. In fact, most economists believe that the bailout accentuated the problem. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped an additional 3000 points since the bailout that was going to save us all was passed.

This week, executives from the “Big Three” automakers were on Capitol Hill to try to convince lawmakers of their need for a bailout of their own. After the hearings, congressional leaders held a press conference to explain their inability to come to any agreement on a bailout. Their explanation was what we have come to expect from Washington politicians. They shifted the blame to the automakers, not for their failing companies, but for failing to present them a plan on which they could agree. They set a date of December 2 for them to present plans for a bailout on which they could come to a consensus.

Does Congress believe that if they just throw money at the problem that the crisis will just disappear? This has become the normal routine in Washington. Whatever the problem, politicians just throw money at the problem, but don’t change any of the contributing factors that led to the problem. Look at government funded education. For years the public school system has been a breeding ground for failure or mediocrity at best. Government’s answer is to throw more money at the schools but never changing how or what they teach. Then they are surprised when the results are the same.

I realize that this may be a completely foreign concept to Congress, but since when do we reward poor business practice by giving them taxpayer money? I believe that the government should get out of the way of failing businesses. They should do whatever they can in the way of tax relief to aid in the expansion of businesses, but why should they reward those who make poor choices? I believe that after Congress throws money at the auto industry, the automakers will be in the same situation within a few short years. They need to restructure their business so that they can compete with the foreign competition. The process will be painful, but the U.S. auto industry will be better off in the long run. The taxpayers need to let the politicians know that based on their history of failures, we do not want them to meddle in the affairs of private companies.

Bush's Approval Rating at 33%, Congress 29%

For the past several months we have listened to the breathless reports of the news media of the President’s low approval ratings. Bush’s numbers as of Tuesday of this week are at a dismal 33% according to a recent Gallup poll. His numbers have hovered between the 30% to 40% range for the past year or so. Bush’s problem is obvious, the war in Iraq. One thing missing from the news reports about Bush’s approval numbers is the approval rating of the Congress.

In the same Gallup poll, the Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi run Congress have lower approval numbers than the President does. A staggering 29% of Americans believe that Congress is doing a good job. We have to look at the numbers a little differently than we look at the President’s. Control of both houses of Congress was handed over to the Democrats in January of this year. In January the numbers jumped from 21% before the takeover to 35% after Nancy Pelosi became the first woman Speaker of the House. In the four months that the Democrats have run the legislative branch of our government, the independent and Democratic voters have lost faith in the ability of the Democrats to get the job done.

I believe that many in the Democratic party are upset that their leaders have not ended all funding for the war, and they have not brought impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush. The independent voters are upset because they voted for a change in Washington, and they see that the Democrats are not fulfilling their promises of fiscal responsibility.

In the four months since the changeover, what major legislation has been passed? What has been accomplished? They passed a supplemental war funding bill that was laden with pork and a timetable for surrender in Iraq. They knew that the bill would never be signed by the President, but they passed it anyway to appease their far left wing supporters.

This week the House was working on another supplemental funding bill, also loaded with pork and a surrender date, and Speaker Pelosi made speeches about needing to work on a bipartisan resolution to the stalemate. I have noticed that whenever any politician speaks of bipartisanship, they really mean that the opposition needs to agree with all of my points. The Senate rejected their version of the bill with bipartisan support against the bill. I guess that isn’t the type of bipartisanship the Ms. Pelosi and Harry Reid were looking for.

The Congress and the administration were able to work on a bipartisan bill this week. The new and improved immigration bill that both the Congress and the administration worked on all week does have bipartisan support, but only when it comes to the politicians. Illegal immigration is one issue that the majority of the voting public agrees on. Most Americans want to see something significant done about the illegal immigration problem, but both political parties want some form of amnesty and are afraid to do anything about securing our borders.
I believe that both Congress and the administration would see a significant jump in their numbers if they stopped patronizing to a perceived voting block of people and actually accomplished something on illegal immigration and securing our borders. The Congress would see a change in their numbers if they stopped their sophomoric attempts at ending the war and just passed something definitive. If they believe that we have lost the war, as Harry Reid said a few weeks ago, then they should pull all funding for the war and take an actual stand for something. Congressmen are voted into office to do what is best for their constituents and for the country. I believe it would be the wrong thing to do, but if it is what they believe is best than go ahead and do it.