Posted by
Steve on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:31:35 PM
One thing that the Obama administration does that really bothers me is to declare everything an emergency. Then, after declaring it an emergency the solution is to ram a bill through Congress that no member of Congress has read.
Congress does not take orders from the White House. Members of the House and Senate are expected to be knowledgeable about the bills they vote on. A great example of how this system is broken is the health care bill currently being rammed down the throats of Congress. Even the White House has no idea what is in the bill. I have not heard or read one member of Congress or the Executive Branch who has said they know what is contained in the health care bill. This includes the President. Who said yesterday that he had no idea what was contained in the bill. Since nobody knows what is in the bill, shouldn’t we take a step back and let everyone read it first? That would seem to be the prudent thing to do. If a member of Congress did not want to read the actual bill, they could assign a member of their staff to read the bill and prepare a summary for them to read. This second method would get them over the hump, but is clearly not the best option.
We all saw what happened when nobody reads a bill. The stimulus bill was passed because it was so important for the country that it passes immediately. Come to find out that most of the bill will not even take effect for years. When you do not read a bill, you can expect to be surprised at what is contained in the bill. You cannot rely on the White House, regardless of which party holds the White House, to tell you the truth. You have to do your own research to find out if there is anything in there that you object to. If you oppose funding abortions, you better know if the bill proposes to fund abortions or your credibility is shot with your constituents. The people that vote for you expect you to read each and every bill before you vote on that bill. If you want government funding of abortions and the bill prohibits government funding of abortions, you had better know about it before the vote.
Is it me, or have members of Congress gotten lazy about reading each bill. It used to be that you could guarantee that each member of the House and Senate had read and was familiar with all aspects of a bill before it was debated before each chamber. Now, you can tell that some have not read the bills from the comments they make in the debates. One of the problems is the voters. We keep electing these politicians that do not take the time to do their job. The reason we keep electing them is that we do not do our job. If a politician messes up big time in year one of his term, by the end of his term people have forgotten about it altogether. We need to make sure that we keep after these politicians to keep them honest. If we do our job better, you can guarantee that the politicians will do their jobs better so they can keep their jobs.
Politicians understand votes very well. If they perceive that if they vote a certain way that they will lose their next race, they will not vote that way. This is true, even if the politician believes strongly in the idea. That is because most politicians are not “true believers”. Politicians will jump from issue to issue and flip-flop on both sides of an issue. What keeps them in check is a block of voters that believe strongly in an idea and threatening the politician’s job. The threat does not have to be in the open. Just having a group together that will support an idea is enough to get political support from the politician. You also have to make sure that the politician knows that you support a particular issue and that you have votes behind you. That will change a politician’s mind faster than anything else.