Like gum under a bus seat.
That’s how Congressman Ric Keller describes wasteful and unfair federal programs that America’s taxpayers just can’t seem to get rid of. All thanks to career politicians afraid of offending some narrow special interest or other.
Representative Keller is a freshman from Orlando, Florida who has limited his time in Congress to four terms. He says term limits give him the freedom to say “No” to the gum under the bus seat.
For example, Keller says he would get rid of corporate price supports of sugar, ethanol and peanuts that make products more expensive for consumers. He would drop the federal mandate for expensive union labor on federal projects, which adds 25 percent to the cost of building any new school that receives federal money. And he would close down the Rural Electrification Administration, started in the 1930s to bring electricity to the country and still being funded even though we’ve got electricity all over the place now. (Well, except maybe California.)
Congressman Keller says he has come to Washington to make a difference, not to pursue an endless political career. So he can afford to let special interest groups take aim at him if he does something they don’t like. He’s not going to be clinically depressed if he has to become a private citizen again.
Says Keller: “The worst thing that can happen is I lose and I go back into private practice and make double my salary and live on a big lake. I have the freedom to do what is right. And I wish we had other folks up here who were here more to do what is right and then go back home.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.