Congressional Lifers are Killing Us

The fate of the country is in the wrong hands.

We have a serious problem.  Our country has been on a downward spiral for several years now.  And, while I have many issues with Barak Obama as the president (based both on pre-Oval Office things and his actions since he got there), this is not Obama’s fault.  And, while George W. Bush infuriated the country with his immature attitude and selfish decisions that would bake a bishop kick out a stained glass window, this is not Bush’s fault.  And, while the 1996 Community Reinvestment Act started the sub-prime mortgages that eventually led to the corruption of the banks and Wall Street firms, and the criminally negligent bet-hedging that ensued, this is not Bill Clinton’s fault either.

We have a serious problem.  And that problem is Congress.  Specifically, the lifelong congressional members of both houses.  The congressional lifers have created a bubble, that somehow manages to eliminate both critical thinking and conscience.  They have literally taken over the country, and run it as their personal playground, no matter what it does to us.  And it is, by far, one of the most insulting institutions in the global political landscape, which has cost us credibility and respect from the rest of the world economic institutions.  And it is counter to the intentions of the Founding Fathers.

Originally, the condition for holding a Senate or House seat was either owning a company, or having a long term full-time career – because the congressional positions were both temporary and part-time service.  They didn’t want anyone’s financial livelihood tied to the job, as they knew it would foster corruption.  In the Articles of Confederation, the maximum term was called “3 in 6.”  In other words, no one could serve more than 3 years in any 6 year span, after which you could try to run again.  When the Constitution was ratified in 1787, term limits had been removed.  Until the 20^th century, this was not a problem.  The people were so conditioned to term limits that new people were regularly voted in to office simply out of habit.  Congressmen worked around that by rotating the nominations to office amongst themselves, so many of the same people would hold the office for a few years at a time, every few years.

The primary system we are in now contributed hugely to the ever-ubiquitous “Incumbent.”  As congressmen won re-elections over and over, they started campaigning for re-election as soon as the current one finished.  The average congressman today has to raise $10,000 -$15,000 a week while in office, just to be considered financially competitive for the next election.  This becomes less of a necessity once gerrymandering was allowed.  For those who don’t know “gerrymandering” is the act of carving out districts to eliminate sections that are least likely to vote for you – the intention, obviously, to protect a party or an incumbent.  The name refers to Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry who, in 1812, carved up a district in Boston so much, the end result resembled a salamander. Critics put the to terms together and the name has stuck since.   A normal voting district would look like a slice of a state – a solid chunk.  Check out the nuttiest gerrymandered districts in the country here:  http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2010/11/11/the-top-ten-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts-in-the-united-states/

As gerrymandering protects incumbents, the advent of the congressional lifer took hold.  And these lifers have changed the system within Congress itself many times over, to the degree that newcomers who want to change the system for the betterment of the people tend not to last very long.  The newbies only have a shot to stay long term if they find a way to play along with the veterans who have slickly gamed the system to their own betterment.  It’s why, while the rest of the country would go to prison for engaging in insider trading within the financial markets, legislators for decades would invest their own money into financial projects they had control over in Congress.  Even when Congress outlawed it under pressure from the people, they still looked the other way for years when some of them engaged in it.  It’s why they exempted themselves from most of the laws that the rest of the country had to follow.  That has since changed officially, but we see legislators ever year having to resign, or come under investigation for corruption.  And notice, it’s rarely the younger ones this happens to – it’s almost always the lifers.  Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangle, Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Dick Gephart, etc. have run afoul and ended up in ethics investigations.  Naturally, these investigations tend to be politically motivated, but what it represents is a willingness of Congress to look the other way on each other, so long as you don’t rock the boat too much.

Since most of these lifers rarely have to worry about being beaten out for their seat, thanks in large part to their slickly gerrymandered districts, they tend to feel impervious, invincible – and that caters to the willingness to do whatever they want, no matter who they irritate, and no matter how hypocritical they may be in doing so.  I remember being astounded by Nancy Pelosi a couple of years back.  While she was bashing every CEO under the sun for using private jets to tool around the country while the American people were suffering economically (cue the single tear and the violin), it turned out she was averaging over a million dollars a year flying an Air Force Gulfstream 5 (they even said she was averaging over $50,000/year just for in-flight food and alcohol).  And these costs to the taxpayers don’t even include the security detail that flew with her.  Apparently, “Do as I say, not as I do” is a convenient mantra…

This mindset has permeated all levels of the legislature, and even into the executive branch.  Bush pounded the Patriot Act into us, skipping over the huge curtailing of freedom involved.  He saddled us with trillions in debt to fight wars that amounted to little more than flexing to rid himself of Daddy’s shadow.  He also contributed to the financial meltdown by stripping regulations off the backs of the banks and Wall Street financial institutions that gambled away their investors’ money, while hedging their bets on derivatives that rewarded them for failure.  Obama took over and turned on the printing presses, just inventing money out of thin air, thereby devaluing the dollar around the world, ticking off all the countries that bought our debt.  The debt ceiling has been raised a couple of times, and will be raised again in early 2013 when we hit the 16.4 trillion debt mark in November.  Yet while the rest of the country struggles, the one thing he didn’t want to hear from the GOP when negotiating the budget was cutting spending.  We have no money – we’re less than broke, we’re 16.3 trillion in the hole – but don’t you dare tell anyone to stop spending money.  What does it matter, it’s just our kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids that will suffer for it… 

And the power brokers in Congress tend to be the lifers, who don’t care about politicizing every little piece of minutiae – they won’t likely lose in the next election, so no skin off their nose.  This country is in the state it’s in because the lifers in Congress have made it so, with greed, antipathy, hypocrisy, and corruption.  And we can’t get them out, because they’ve gerrymandered their way into perpetual incumbency.  They have ruined us, both domestically and internationally.  If there’s even a sliver of a chance to get this country back on track, they have to go – all of them.  And term limits and salary increases need to be decided by the American people, not Congress themselves (I can’t imagine why they’ve always gotten the salary increases they want AND manage to vote down term limits - just a tad self perpetuating, no?)  Gerrymandering has to go – normal redistricting needs to happen soon, to reflect the entirety of a district, not just the “family” members who don’t even look at the ballot anymore.  And one need only look at the Republican primary field to see just how deep we’ve sunk.  I remember thinking what a silly joke John Kerry was in 2004.  Now way could that guy be taken seriously – the embodiment of an “empty suit.”  And now I look at the GOP candidates and sigh, because it’s simply more of that same thing.  This is looking very bad for us.  I don’t want Obama in office anymore, but I can’t help but feel a GOP president from this crop would be a major step backwards.  Clearly, Congress is where we fix this, not the White House.

We have a serious problem.  And we know a solution.  We now need the guts to act on it.