2006-10-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

Congress just adjourned in order to return to their home districts and ask you to vote them back in for another term. That's at least two more years of the same. Think, do you really want this? What has Congress done in the past two years?

Of the major issues facing the nation today, Congess achieved nothing on any of them.

Immigration reform? Nothing
Off-shore drilling for oil? Nothing
Health Care Reform? Nothing
Tax Relief? Nothing
Social Security Reform? Nothing
The matter of Congressional Ethics? Punted to the next Congress. Not important.

What did they do? Congress passed a lot of small legislation behind closed doors favoring home town or big-campaign-donor interests in many fields. Pharmacy (make us all pay inflated US prices or go without), Agriculture (38 cent tariff on imported sugar ethanol, to protect high prices of our small domestic crop. There goes energy independence in one vote).

One congressman was caught chasing young Congressional pages. When exposed, Congress suggested the obvious fix: Get rid of the pages, not upgrade the conduct of congressmen.

Back in the first Gilded Age, Boles Penrose was a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania who has been put and kept in office by the railroad tycoons and oil barons. He assured the moguls: "I believe in the division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass laws under which you make money, and out of your profits you further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money." Gilded ages then and now have one thing in common: audacious and shameless people for whom the very idea of the public trust is a cynical joke. (thank you Bill Moyers)

70% of Americans believe lobbyists bribing members of Congress is the way things work. Ordinary people believe their bonds with democracy are not only stretched but sundered.

In a few weeks we vote. What did Congress do for you, lately? Conversely, what did they do to make life harder for you, and transfer more of your earnings into their pockets? Do you really want to vote them back to work?

Or, do we need someting better than Congress, for our great nation?

Triangle Yale Club