Congressional Reforms
From my vantage point there has been a continuing failure of our presidents and the congress to inform the people in any real detail about their plans and legislation far enough in advance for us to react on just about every piece of legislation in the past 9 years or more. It seems to me that the idea is to hold the contents of legislation close until there are enough votes for passage, and then to sign it and dump it onto the public, all the while crowing about their victories ad nauseam.
Partisans leak bits and pieces for us to chew upon and react for or against as a kind of vetting the ideas involved, but an honest debate on the whole thing, with publication of the details in advance, is assiduously avoided. What we really get are platitudes and generalities, along with trumped up warnings of dire consequences if the legislation is not enacted real soon now.
What is the cure? We have a fundamental problem with the structure of the congress and its partisan and changeable governing rules, the fact of multi-term incumbents whose main efforts appear to be election campaigning and sheparding earmarks to their states, of outside interests lavishly funding reelections in return for favorable regulatory treatment, and what appears to be a corrupting methodology that turns fresh newbie’s into compliant dogs in a matter of weeks or months in office, which nets them financial largess out of the budget for their states. The last thing wanted, it seems, is true transparency of the horse-trading processes whereby they plan for, legislate and spend trillions of taxpayer dollars, much of it behind closed doors. We need reforms, but these kinds of changes would be virtually impossible to enact, and would be fought against to the death by many of the current legislators.
So, sadly, I do not know what the cures would be or how they could be effected. How many honorable, patriotic, wise and prudent legislators do you know?
# posted by Mannning @ 2:08 PM
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