Category: Common Sense

Ten years ago the partisan bickering in the California Legislature got so out of control that the legislators couldn’t even pass a state budget. The gridlock closed the government down forcing the state to give IOUs to its workers and companies it did business with.

Today, it’s a new ball game in California. After witnessing their Legislature in chaos, the good people of our nation’s most populous state took matters into their own hands. Using California’s initiative process, citizens placed term limits on the ballot.

Former Speaker Willie Brown raised 5 million dollars from big lobbyists and special interests to run TV ads against the measure, but the voters weren’t fooled. They passed term limits, sending career politicians of both parties packing. The change has been hard to miss term limits have worked wonders.

People from all walks of life are coming to serve in the Legislature, while years ago most who ran were career politicians and staffers. Women and minorities have gained positions of influence previously denied them. Budgets pass on time and the vicious partisan infighting is gone. Now that’s a brand new day for California as it is for 17 other states with limits on their legislators.

Sure, politicians, lobbyists and special interests don’t like it, because they’ve lost power. But the people support term limits even more now than a decade ago.

Shelly Bebitch Jeffe recently said: “One interesting result of term limits has been a Legislature that looks more like California, both demographically and ideologically.” In other words, term limits have given the people of California a legislature that not only looks more like them, it thinks more like them, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Congressmen talk about the mess in Washington as if they are powerless voices in the wilderness, fighting gallantly but helplessly against the bureaucracy and other spendthrift members. Yet when it’s reelection time, they come home beating their chests about how much clout they have in Washington and how their magical seniority gives them nearly carte blanche to deliver gobs of fat pork-​barrel spending. All we have to do is look around to see that our congressmen aren’t as powerful or as innocent as they pretend.

But what about this mysterious seniority? No church group or company or civic club would choose leaders through seniority, but Congress does. Most Americans like the idea of representatives who go to Washington for a short period of time, yet politicians claim they can’t bring home the bacon without climbing the seniority ladder by staying in Washington for 20 years, or longer.

Fortunately, the facts tell a different story. True, the longer someone’s in Congress the more seniority they have, but they don’t send home more federal money. The real numbers show no correlation between the seniority of a state’s congressional delegation and federal spending in the state. What seniority does produce is an entrenched Congress full of special interest influence, and wasteful spending. Few Americans benefit.

No state or district ever gained prosperity through special favors from Washington. Seniority is a costly mirage that only shows up in the taxes taken out of all of our paychecks.

President Truman once said term limits “would help cure seniority and senility two terrible legislative diseases.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Our Founders were very wise.

“The natural progress of things,” said Thomas Jefferson, “is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” That’s why they created a system of checks and balances to keep government under control and protect our freedom.

One important check is the citizen initiative. The initiative process which only 23 out of 50 states enjoy allows citizens to gather petitions to require a vote on a law or constitutional amendment. The initiative prevents legislators from monopolizing law-​making power, giving the people ultimate authority. Without the initiative, many states would never have passed campaign reforms or tax cut measures.

Legislators in virtually every state refused to abide by the popular clamor for term limits. Today, 18 states have passed term limits laws, all but one with the initiative process. But some question whether the people can be trusted passing laws directly. If the people can be trusted to elect representatives, why can’t we be trusted to decide issues?

This country’s strength has always been the good sense and the common decency of the average American, not an elite in Washington or the state capitals making decisions for us. Our founders supported a representative form of government not to keep the people out of decision-​making, but because we couldn’t all afford to abandon our jobs and travel to the capitol. The whole purpose was a government where ‘We the People’ rule. That’s why we cannot allow our legislators to hold a monopoly on passing laws.

The initiative process puts the people in charge, and that’s the American way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There they go again.

Career politicians in Washington are conspiring to grab another pay raise. Little do they seem to care that most of us the folks who pay the bills and the ones they’re supposed to be representing believe Congress is already overpaid, over-​perked and over-pensioned.

The base salary for a member of Congress is $136,700 dollars. That puts their take home pay in the upper 2 percent of all Americans. And while they constantly say that they could make more in the private sector, rarely do they volunteer to leave their cushy jobs.

Still, the dollar figures are not really the issue. What’s more troubling is the sneaky way they try to scam us and take us for granted. It’s not a pay raise we’re told; it’s a COLA: a cost of living adjustment.

How Orwellian!

Now they’ve cooked up a new scheme. California Congressman Bill Thomas suggests they give themselves a per diem, which would mean a cool $20,000 more a year tax-​free . One congressman says, “We won’t tackle a COLA or a per diem in or near an election year, so this must break now.” You see, they’re afraid we natives might get restless around election time.

Who in Congress will stand up to yet another pay grab? The Citizen Legislator Caucus, that’s who! This recently formed group puts the public first and opposes the pay raise. These representatives have term-​limited themselves. They simply aren’t looking to cash in on a career. Hmmmm. Citizen legislators who put our interests first what an idea!

Maybe your congressman should join up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

How would you like to pick a fight with someone who has a million dollars sitting in the bank to wage war against you and big connections with the federal government? Would it create any hardship if you had to quit your job?

Anyone who dares to run for Congress against an incumbent must answer these questions. It’s not just that incumbents have the money to pulverize a challenger with 30-​second character assassination TV ads. It’s more.

All at the taxpayers’ expense, they mail to voters in their district, use radio and television studios in the capitol, and have a big staff working day-​in, day-​out, for the congressman’s reelection. Even these advantages are only the tip of the iceberg.

In 1998, 98.5 percent of incumbents were re-​elected. For those in office more than two terms, the re-​election rate was 100 percent. Not a single old bull was defeated. In fact, more than 1 in 5 congressmen had no opponent at all denying voters even a protest vote. Wonder why politicians don’t listen to you?

Eric O’Keefe in his new book “Who Rules America” points out: “They don’t have to. By discarding rotation in office, we have inherited a Congress free to flout the opinions of the folks back in the district. After all, what are they going to do about it: run against the frank-​cranking, staff-​fattened incumbent? Lotsa luck.”

Professional politicians are monopolizing our political process. In the economy, monopolies cause higher prices and lower quality. Well, they wreck havoc in politics, too. The longer folks stay in Washington, the less competition they face, and the less they listen to us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Washington is a strange place. At times, frankly, it’s a theater of the absurd.

Congressman Bill McCollum of Florida just introduced a constitutional amendment for term limits. Of course, as he well knows there are still far too many career politicians in Congress for the amendment to have any chance. But in putting his legislation forward Mr. McCollum pointed out that congressional careerism is one of the biggest problems our country faces.

Only in Washington!

You see while Congressman McCollum is right about the problems of careerism, he’s also been in office for 19 years and he has no intention of leaving anytime soon. He campaigns against careerism while pursuing a lifelong career in Congress.

When asked if he hasn’t fallen victim to the corrupting influences of power after two decades in office, Mr. McCollum replied, “I would say there are exceptions to every rule.”

What hypocrisy! While the real leaders of term limits have pledged to limit themselves to be citizen legislators right here and now to lead by example, Mr. McCollum smugly preaches a creed he refuses to live by. If you believe in term limits, then they should apply to you. Andrew Carnegie once remarked, “As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

No amendment has a snowball’s chance while career politicians control Congress. We must change Congress by sending a different kind of representative to Washington, one pledged to come back home. Mr. McCollum would do well to remember that George Washington established the two-​term limit on the President by boldly stepping down himself not by sending out a press release.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.