Author: Redactor

President Reagan used to say that Congress spent money like drunken sailors. But he would always apologize to drunken sailors because at least they spent their own money.

Well, there Congress goes again. They’re spending over $100 billion on 198 programs that Congress itself did not authorize.

It works like this: Congress passes an authorization bill which says how much money should be spent and how. Then Congress passes appropriation bills to actually release the funds from the Treasury to “cut the check.” If a program isn’t authorized then Congress has not approved it. Yet, the appropriations committee writes legislation to fund programs that Congress didn’t authorize. And the Rules Committee has a rule under which congressmen cannot object to this unauthorized spending.

A rule against objecting to breaking the rules. Only in Washington!

Who found this little trick and brought it to light? A crusty, old careerist who knows where all the bodies are buried?

Well, no. A freshman, first-​termer, Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado. A guy pledged to serve no more than three terms in Washington. This new kid on the block got 13 other congressmen to sign a letter to the Rules Committee criticizing this practice and urging the Rules Committee not to block objections to this unauthorized spending.

P.J. O’Rourke once said: “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” At least we know that not everyone in Congress is drunk with power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

They say that only 2 things are certain in life: death and taxes. Let’s focus on taxes, considered certain for two reasons.

First, taxes are collected involuntarily, and secondly, politicians are very fond of spending other people’s money. Very.

A new report from the National Taxpayers Union says the tax revolt that began with Proposition 13 in the 1970’s would never have happened without the initiative process. NTU found that tax limitation measures passed directly by voters through the initiative have a made a very real difference. On the other hand, tax measures passed by politicians themselves are typically “toothless.”

Why do our so-​called representatives behave so badly when it comes to taxes and spending? The longer a politician sits on the receiving end of your tax dollars, instead of the paying end, the worse it gets. He grows fond of spending money and thereby making friends among special interests.

Our Founders advocated the proposition “No taxation without representation.” But today’s political leaders don’t really represent us on tax issues.

The exceptions are found among those who term-​limit themselves. They know one day soon they’ll give up their powerful position spending our tax dollars and have to go back to merely paying the bills like the rest of us.

Hank Williams used to sing, “I’ll never get out of this world alive.” But the only thing that’s certain about taxes is that career politicians like spending our tax dollars a whole lot more than “We, the People” like paying them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

As children we learned that honesty was the best policy. When we get older some people forget this lesson. They’re called politicians.

Mark Twain once humorously called Congress “America’s only native criminal class.” We laugh, but when politicians campaign saying one thing and then do the opposite it assaults the very foundation of our representative democracy.

How can the people control their government if they are lied to by those who go to Washington to decide policy? How can they know what they’re voting for?

Pundits are quick to blame the voters for the country’s problems. After all, they say, we elected the bums.

But hold on.

Jimmy Carter promised to balance the budget, but never submitted a balanced budget to Congress. Four years later he was defeated by Ronald Reagan, who likewise promised a balanced budget and never submitted one. Then George Bush promised he would not raise taxes. He did. Bill Clinton defeated him promising a middle-​class tax cut that he soon abandoned.

A number of Congressmen have pledged to limit their time in office knowing that’s what the voters want. The good news is that most of those who made the term limits pledge are keeping it. Those few who aren’t keeping their word have denied citizens an honest choice in elections.

We cannot allow politicians to break their word in the belief that they’re all dishonest. They aren’t all dishonest, and we must hold them accountable for their words and deeds. Honesty is not only the best policy; it’s the only way that we as citizens can have a say in our government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

If one more condescending elitist in Washington says the public is “fat, dumb and happy” I’m going to scream.

Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia put the conventional wisdom a little more delicately: “These are good times. They’re not that crazy about Congress, but they really don’t care.”

It’s true, of course that the American people are happier when the economy is strong. Why shouldn’t we be? Our hard work and smarts made it happen.

But we’re not so happy with our government. The Center on Policy Attitudes reported that: “the majority of Americans is quite dissatisfied with the American government. Given that the US economy is booming … one might expect Americans to show higher levels of satisfaction. Nonetheless, fewer than a third of Americans say that they ‘trust the government in Washington to do what is right’ most of the time.” The study also found that 83 percent of us believe special interests have more influence than voters, 67 percent say government doesn’t understand what they think, 89 percent say gridlock in Congress is caused more by partisan posturing than honest disagreement.

The bottom-​line is that this is our government and it should listen to us, but it doesn’t. The career politicians would like us to be “fat, dumb and happy” so that we’ll shut up, pay our taxes and leave the decisions to them.

But until our representatives stop putting their own careers ahead of the public interest, the American people will not be happy. Even in good economic times, we want a government that works for us.

Is anyone in Washington listening?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

“We’re all in this together.”

That’s what Robert DeNiro kept saying as he risked his life to help people against an oppressive government in the futuristic movie “Brazil.”

A new poll says DeNiro is right, or at least most Americans agree that “we’re all in this together.” Specifically, 67 percent want their representative to look past the narrow interests of their district or region and work for what’s best for the country as a whole.

It’s an old political trick to play on divisions between states, regions, races, nationalities, and religions. The idea is to distract voters. Instead of worrying about what we get from Washington for the tax dollars we spend, they want us to look at what we get compared to some other group.

The politicians want you to think they bring home the bacon. But what they don’t want you to consider is that even in the fattest pork district in the country, the average taxpayer pays a lot more in taxes than they get back.

Career politicians beat their chests about returning a few pennies on the dollars you fork over. They conveniently fail to mention that they voted for wasteful spending in every other district in order to get their pet pork project passed. We all end up poorer, not richer. And the only ones fighting this “rob Peter to pay Paul” mentality are the representatives who limit their time in Congress.

Americans understand that their district won’t truly benefit from policies that hurt the entire country. The career politicians are always trying to separate us, but the American people know we’re all in this together.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Is $150,000,000 a lot of money to you? Or is it just chicken feed?

That’s how much of your money Rep. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma saved by blocking wasteful spending in recent appropriation bills. He stopped a 12 percent increase in the Agriculture budget, headed not to farmers but to the bureaucrats in Washington. He also angered colleagues by blocking a big increase in spending for Congress itself.

Money doesn’t mean as much to folks in the nation’s capitol as it does to you and me. They’re always spending other people’s money, namely yours.

The Washington Post referred to the millions Coburn saved as “chicken feed.” Our national government spends $40,000 a second. How long does a person have to be around such spending before losing all touch with economic reality?

While it’s frustrating that the political class in Washington doesn’t value the hard-​earned tax dollars American working people pay, it’s rewarding to see how frustrated they are at having to deal with a Tom Coburn. You see, Coburn limited himself to three terms and will not seek reelection next year. So there’s no way to threaten or bribe him.

“Government of, by and for the people” means sending representatives to Washington who will represent the taxpayers, rather than promote their careers by fattening special interests. Tom Coburn’s courage in holding the line on spending has led a Capitol Hill newspaper, to call him “the de facto leader of the House.”

That kind of statesmanship isn’t chicken feed, it’s priceless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Term limits are taking effect all over the country and the results have been more competitive elections with new people getting involved in the process.

That’s a very good thing, unless of course you’re a career politician who hopes to stay in office forever.

Let’s face it, the people and the politicians just disagree on term limits. The politicians want to hide from the term limits voters enacted and keep on running. In Florida, incumbents have so monopolized the field that in most races no one even runs against them, and thus, voters have no choice at all about who represents them in the state legislature.

Yet, this lack of competition didn’t stop the politicians from launching a desperate lawsuit to overturn the term limits, opposing the will of 77 percent of the voters. In California, a recent poll showed 73 percent support term limits more now after 9 years on the books than when the law was first proposed. But that hasn’t stopped legislators from writing bills to repeal or weaken term limits.

The same is true in Oregon. In Maine, legislators were all set to weaken term limits. A bill passed the House by a vote of 76 to 71. But then radio ads alerted the public to the legislature’s actions and with the public up in arms, members reversed themselves defeating the very same bill 94 to 52.

Here’s the message for career politicians in every state: you can’t run and you can’t hide either. The people are watching.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

We hear a little too often that we in the United States should change some policy simply because other countries do things another way. The implication is somehow that if most countries do things differently we in the U.S. must be behind the times.

I’m reminded of my Mother’s oft-​repeated admonition, “If everybody else jumps off a cliff, are you going to?”

Let’s remember that there is something special about America, something unique. We have freedom not because a king granted it to us, but because it is ours by birthright. In America, we created the government, and therefore we, the people, are the sovereigns.

The Declaration of Independence established our country as the first nation ever created on the principles of self-​government. It reads: “We hold these Truths to be self-​evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed … ”

We’re in charge. In no other nation are the people held to be the sovereigns. Talk to people in other countries, even the democracies of Western Europe, and you can see their attitude toward government is shaped differently than is ours.

It’s not that we can’t learn from other countries, we can. But it would be like jumping off that cliff my mother warned me about not to cherish our unique American heritage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There’s a new word in the English language: to “Nethercutt.” To nethercutt means to go back on one’s word; to say one thing in order to get elected to public office and then to do the opposite once elected. It means to be dishonest, a hypocrite, an opportunist.

The word comes from Congressman George Nethercutt, who defeated the Speaker of the House on a pledge to serve no more than three terms in Congress. Nethercutt has now broken his word to the voters and plans to keep running to cash in on a career in Washington.

The Seattle Times defines “Nethercutting” as, “the cynical, self-​serving hypocrisy of someone who exploits others for personal gain.” In stark contrast to Nethercutt, Representative Matt Salmon and seven others who made term limit pledges have kept them. When asked about Nethercutt’s excuses for breaking his word, Salmon said bluntly: “I don’t buy those arguments and I can trump all of them with one card: if you give your word you ought to keep it end of story.”

The sports pages recently carried a story about the kind of integrity Mr. Nethercutt lacks. Felipe Alou is the manager of the Montreal Expos, a baseball team that has been down on their luck this year. Alou turned down an offer to go to another team, saying: “I always said I would not leave this organization … I had to keep my word. It doesn’t matter if you are winning games or losing games. We die with our word.”

No wonder people like sports better than politics. There’s less chance you’ll get “nethercutted.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Representative Mark Sanford says: “Musical chairs is a great children’s game, but not one that I would recommend for committee chairmen.” Washington politicians often act like children and they’re doing it again when it comes to term limits for committee chairmen. Like spoiled brats they’re refusing to share power.

When Republicans took over the Congress in 1994 they promised to shake up the corrupt fiefdoms of powerful committee chairman and share the power through term limits. Those term limits on committee chairs were the most important reform they made. Now that the limits are coming up, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert announced that chairmen can simply swap committees so that the same small clique-​averaging over 20 years in Washington-​can keep their stranglehold on power. Self-​limiter Matt Salmon of Arizona called Hastert’s decision “slight of hand” and Joe Scarborough of Florida said, “This absolutely subverts the spirit of the term-​limit rule we voted for in 1994. A lot of things have apparently changed around here since then-​and not for the better.”

The House Republican leadership has found a way to thwart their own most trumpeted reform by playing musical chairs, so that power can be hoarded in the hands of a few career politicians. In so doing, they’ve once again become the very enemy that they claimed they would run out of town.

This game of musical chairs isn’t over. The Republicans have a very slim majority. Come the 2000 elections, Republicans may find the music has stopped and they’re short a seat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.