Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath which says, “Do no harm.” Politicians should really have something like this.

When it comes to the First Amendment, they do. Our Founders took no chances in protecting the ability of citizens to speak out, assemble, petition government and communicate politically. The First Amendment guards our freedom of speech with it’s opening phrase: “Congress shall make no law …”

Our Founders knew that allowing Congress to regulate speech was like letting the fox guard the chicken coop. Congressmen were thought likely to regulate for their own advantage and against their political opponents. Our Founders were right.

It’s no accident that every so-​called campaign finance reform passed by politicians has made it tougher for challengers and easier for them to stay in office. We’ll never get real reform from careerists.

The legislation being considered in Congress would actually make it a crime for independent groups to mention a candidate’s name or show his picture. One congressman said we can’t have both fair elections and the First Amendment.

Outrageous! Safe incumbents wouldn’t know a fair election if it bit them, and yet they’re ready to destroy our rights.

There’s a better way. A recent study in California found that since term limits were passed campaign spending has gone down and been more equal than at any time in the 20-​year period studied. But career politicians aren’t interested in reform, or the facts. If they were, they would support term limits and step down themselves. Until then, maybe they better stick with the Hypocrites Oath.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The IRS estimates that the average taxpayer who itemizes will spend 22 hours this year completing tax returns. That’s 3 hours more work than last year. The increase is due to the 1,260 changes Congress pushed into the tax code in the past two years.

Mention the IRS and most congressmen will boast about the show hearings they held, finally, on Gestapo-​like abuses by IRS agents. These hearings were great for TV sound-​bites, but what about the pain and suffering we all go through with these confusing tax forms. Especially when the rules keep changing every year.

Now I’m not one to defend the IRS, but they just enforce the tax code, they don’t write it. Congress does that. Remember anyone for Congress ever campaigning on a platform of making the tax code even longer and more complicated? No, candidate after candidate calls for a simpler tax code, but Congress still votes for a more complex one. What’s going on here?

Simple, big tax loopholes are easier to hide in a complex code. Mention changing the tax code and all the lobbyists in Washington open up their fat checkbooks to make campaign contributions. That’s why the tax code is the best fundraising device Congress ever designed. No wonder Congress passed 1,260 changes costing you 3 more hours of precious sleep.

Most congressmen don’t start out putting their career and re-​election fundraising ahead of the public interest, but the longer they’re in Washington, well … When you and I are up half the night filling out our taxes, let’s remember it’s the career politicians in Congress who need to wake up and smell the coffee.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Social Security is called the third rail of politics because when a program sends checks to millions, a congressman who talks about changing it puts himself at risk of being politically electrocuted. If you want a career in Washington, who needs risk?

Thankfully, some view Congress differently. They aren’t trying to cash in on a career. Forty-​five Representatives have limited themselves to three House terms. These are the kind of legislators America’s founders hoped would go to Congress folks not afraid to tackle the tough issues.

Mark Sanford of South Carolina is one of these term-​limited members and he’s willing to act to save Social Security. He’s introduced legislation to allow you to take back your Social Security account from the politicians. His bill would allow you to invest a portion to grow a real retirement benefit.

Political opponents raise concerns about the risk of allowing you to invest your own money. Yet, the bigger concern is what Mark Sanford calls the “political risk” of leaving your money in the hands of the politicians in Congress.

What is the political risk? Politicians chasing votes have spent every dollar you’ve paid to Social Security. The money’s gone. There is no “trust fund” because Congress couldn’t be trusted. If a private pension fund was run this way, the people would be arrested. Managing your Social Security, Congress spent all the money and the program is headed for bankruptcy.

But why should Congress care? They’ve opted out of Social Security and their congressional pension makes them millionaires. It’s only term-​limited members like Mark Sanford who are willing to touch the third rail so that you won’t get railroaded.

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.

I was driving home when it hit me.

I had gone out of town for a speech and missed my daughter’s school Christmas pageant. On the car phone my wife told me all about it and how excited our daughter was. “I wish you could have been here,” my wife said. That’s when I realized that I could have been there if only I had put my family first.

Changing the world, helping people, restoring Congress are all worthy goals. But not at the price of putting them before one’s family. We all struggle to keep a healthy perspective in this life.

It may be one of the toughest challenges our representatives in Congress face. Traveling back and forth from Washington, so often away from their families, constantly facing pressure to alter their principles to gain support from one special interest or another, and the well-​documented corrupting influence of power, it’s all a recipe for trouble. No wonder even those congressmen who campaign on “family values” have an incredibly high divorce rate.

We send good men and women to Washington, but we place them in an unhealthy system. This is particularly true when they begin to pursue their own career interests, which never match the people’s interests. One cannot serve two masters.

Representative Tom Coburn, a medical doctor who has limited himself to 3 terms, says, “People become addicted to the morphine of power and ego and it does affect your judgement. It’s mind-​altering.” Rep. Mark Sanford has also limited himself to 3 terms. His wife Jenny is glad he’ll soon be spending more time with their boys. She told a reporter, “He’s not the only one in the family who’s for term limits.”

My wife knows exactly what she means. The line between your family and your job is the finest line you’ll ever walk, and for our political leaders, and everyone else, it should lead back home.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.