The Woodward Report
Who's in Charge Here?
September 9, 2009
by Jack Curtis- A Woodward Report Columnist
Who’s actually running the country and shaping our lives? Wanna bet? You’ll say: 1 President, 435 Representatives, 100 Senators and 9 Supremos, totaling 545 people in charge of our destiny. You’ll get your “A” from the high school civics teacher (if they still teach civics) but you’ll be wrong.
Consider what’s been happening recently with very important, life-changing programs. We’ll take the three most important and humongous chunks the government is dealing with right now: The “Stimulus,” the cap-and-trade, and Obama Care health “reform.” They are respectively saving us from economic depression, global warming and the horrifying dangers of our current health care. When we get through here, you’re going to say that you knew about this, you just hadn’t thought about it. I hope you’ll think about it!
Remember the “Stimulus” story? $850 billion for openers, with 1,588 pages hosed through Congress in a few days without being read by most of the Congressfolk, Republican or Democrat; some of the newsies made jokes. We had an emergency, Obama made speeches, it had to be passed now or the known universe would dissolve overnight. It passed; we’re still finding out what’s in it. A few people knew: Obama, in general; the Democratic Congressional leaders in more detail and a few sworn-to-secrecy Congressional Committee shills. Maybe some 15 or 20 people, of whom maybe 3 to 5 mattered. I’m not counting flunkies here. So now we owe all that on top of the rest of the debt making up our bequest to our heirs.
Then, along came cap-and-trade. We have to save the planet, the tide is going out, it’s an emergency; it has to pass before lunch! Some 1,427 pages of fine print legalese, $9.7 trillion of accumulating GDP losses, delivered to the Congresspeople who had to vote on it at the last minute along with several hundred pages of amendments at the very last second. Nobody knew what was in it but Obama said “Jump!” and the House leaders said: “How High?” and the mindless, obedient members duly jumped. The Senators sat it out, this time. It is the largest single regulatory cost increase ever imposed on the country. Probably, on any country; estimates run from $300 to over $3,000 of increased costs annually per family. A little honesty here would help, though preferably not as little as we’re getting.
ObamaCare health reform followed the same script, 1,018 pages adding up to $1.5 trillion in costs, an enormous change in how things are done affecting about 1/6th of U.S. GDP and poking deeply into personal lives. Again, few knew what was in it –even Obama said he wasn’t sure exactly what was in the House bill- but the House Committee suckers were shoved onto the slide with the bill strapped to their backs and orders to produce now! And so, they did. Then the members recessed, hopefully taking the bill with them to find out what’s in it. The Senate is working up its own versions, apparently not aware of the manufactured urgency driving the House; there must be a lot of deaf Senators. However, it will be hard for members to oppose the plan; they have been sworn to sell it to the country during recess.
So: the President stirs up the public and the troops, using the commotion to pressure Congress. Congressional leaders pressure the members, who line up at attention and say, “Sir!” So, how many people are really running the country? And why are we handing a $169,300 a year (2008) salaries, cushy, high-priced perks and better health care and retirement than we get ourselves to a bunch of bozos that don’t even read important stuff they’re voting on? Worse yet, they hide it from us until it’s almost too late, too. In the House, they call themselves “Representatives;” who are they representing? We don’t need to elect expensive legislators for this, we could just mail signature stamps to Washington.
Our Constitution provides a republic, with democratically elected representatives to deliberate and politic among themselves to make the laws. The President and a few Congressional leaders are operating as a small oligarchy, disenfranchising everybody who voted for one of those so-called “Representatives” who vote the party line on orders without knowing exactly what he is getting. We are hiring and paying them; whoever they are representing, it clearly isn’t us.
The Senate stampeded along with the House on the “Stimulus,” throwing billions that had to be borrowed into the wind, hoping both that they might land somewhere useful and that we who ultimately have to repay the borrowing will be able to do that. The Senate has taken a slow pace on cap-and-trade and is being careful about health care. That’s good; it was designed to do that.
So the new government on its most important issues so far, is governing us as a rather heedless little oligarchy one third of the time, trying to do that but being slowed by the Senate on the other two thirds. When they return to what they laughingly call: “work,” we will see how things go.
Representative Darrell Issa was reported complaining to White House staff about its invasive, bullying tactics but no one reported the Congressional top leaders backing him up. We know that neither law nor sausage making should be seen by the faint-hearted but at the moment, too much of our law seems not so much being made, as dictated. Is that what the Founders had in mind?
If our supposed Representatives aren’t doing their jobs, we need to replace them with some who will. If our Senators only do their jobs two thirds of the time, we need to replace them as well. Polls provide Congress little respect but they find more than it seems to deserve at the moment.
We didn’t have the Revolution to be governed by a little oligarchy; we need to clean up Congress and get back to the Constitution. A good start might be with Representative John Conyer who said that reading all the proposed legislation did no good; that’s why he had a staff (Perhaps he’s an illiterate public school grad?)…maybe one of that staff ought to be elected in his place; at least we’d know he’d read what he voted on!
