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Ed Crane, President of the Cato Institute, tells a story that I love hearing. It’s about a career politician and this career politician’s career-​politician mentality. Seems that in the early ’90s Ed was at a conference debating term limits with a California assemblyman named Tom Roos. Crane made what he thought was a strong case for term limits, but the assemblyman was not persuaded.

Assemblyman Roos said, “Mr. Crane, I just don’t understand where you are coming from. I went to undergraduate school at San Jose State. I studied government. I got a master’s degree in public policy. I went to work for an assemblyman. And when he retired, I ran for his seat. And I have been an assemblyman for 13 years. This is my career. This is what I’ve always wanted to do, and you are trying to take my career away from me.”

Crane just shook his head sorrowfully and said, “Assemblyman Roos, I have no doubt that what you say is sincere. I have no doubt in fact that when you were in the third grade you were blackboard monitor or whatever elected post was available at the time.… My only point is that you are an anomaly. You are not like most Americans. They don’t want to be legislators. They want to live in the private sector and do their good work there. And it seems to me that if you want to have representative government, the word ‘representative’ has to be an adjective and not a noun.”

Hey, good point, Ed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Now and then somebody who’s been in the thick of political wheeling and dealing will give us the real scoop about what’s going on out there in the hallowed halls of power.

Too many political memoirs treat politics as usual as some kind of unalterable law of nature. There are some noble exceptions: John Jackley’s Hill Rat, Mark Sanford’s The Trust Committed to Me.

And now former Congressman Tom Coburn is about to add to their number. Like Sanford, Coburn was a term-​limited representative who voluntarily left his job in Washington after three terms. The book isn’t finished yet, so we don’t have many details about what will be in it, but we know what the straight-​talking Coburn has said in the past.

For example, he has bluntly noted that the power folks wield in Washington is, quote, “like morphine.… People give you positive strokes when you don’t deserve them. It takes a very strong individual to recognize when you’re getting [what] you don’t deserve and not let it go to your head.”

Coburn jumped into the battle to begin with because he was “disgusted with Congress,” as he puts it. “I was disgusted with my congressman. He’d been here 14 years. When he left [for Washington], he was a great congressman. He represented the views of the district. At the end, he represented the views of Washington.”

Coburn says the desire for power is “too important” in Washington. And he has plenty of examples. I, for one, plan to be lining up at the bookstore.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

There’s a problem. Relationships between career politicians and certain contributors are too cozy.

Take, for example, the seats on glitzy overseas “trade missions” that the Commerce Department hands out as plums to generous contributors. Senator John McCain says that companies going on these trade missions should accept a 6‑month moratorium on campaign contributions.

Even Steven Moore of the Club for Growth, usually skeptical of McCain’s proposals for campaign finance reform, finds merit in this suggestion. As Moore puts it, “what’s the point of giving CEOs the royal treatment on chartered trade delegation trips, and placing them in the first-​class aisle seats, if you can’t shake them down for money soon thereafter? It’s basically a cash-​in, cash-​out system. It reeks to high hell.”

True enough. But in my view, McCain’s proposal is just spray-​paint on the same old scam. Before and after that six-​month period, you’ll still have politics as usual, only more fast and frantic.

Instead of laying a coat of superficial respectability on a scam that shouldn’t be happening at all, let’s stop the scam. Stop the trade missions. You don’t need to send companies overseas at taxpayers’ expense to lower trade barriers. And if the goal is to scout new markets, well, profit-​seeking firms can pay for the airline tickets themselves.

No amount of regulation will stop people from going after big favors bestowed on them by politicians, so long as the politicians are still allowed to bestow those favors. So let’s put a stop to the taxpayer-​funded favors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Whenever a career politician says the words “taxes” and “moratorium” in the same sentence, look for the candid camera and the whoopee cushion. You’re being set up.

I guess I was one of those fools who thought that a 5‑year moratorium Congress passed on taxing Internet commerce had some teeth to it. But now I hear that there’s bipartisan support for a set of bills that would put the kibosh on that moratorium. Where’s gridlock when you really need it!

The Dorgan-​Istook bill would let states regulate interstate commerce despite the trivial matter of the U. S. Constitution. Under that increasingly irrelevant document, state governments have no authority to tax or regulate interstate commerce. But the feds do have that authority, and allegedly they also have the authority to delegate that authority to the states by setting up this newfangled tax cartel.

Today, you can order stuff from another state by mail-​order without having to pay that other state’s sales tax. Sure, retail stores think they have a bad break when they have to pay more of their gross income in sales taxes than mail-​order outfits do. But the solution to bad taxes is to reform or get rid of them, not to make sure everybody everywhere suffers just as much as you do.

States actually have the power already to tax their merchants for out-​of-​state sales, but they know that doing so means businesses to other states. The proposed cartel gives states a way to eat their tax base and have it, too through a national tax cartel of states.

If this sounds awfully confusing to you, you might want to call your congressman and ask him to explain it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

If you ask me what Congress should do first, cut taxes or cut spending, I will say: cut taxes. Cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes! Slash, hack, burn.

Career politicians are almost never going to cut spending. But once in a while they can be pressured into cutting taxes … at least a little. Just a little bit.

Spending should be snipped too, but who will do it? President Bush says he trusts the people to spend their own money more than he trusts the politicians. But even so, he’s been either unwilling or unable to submit a budget which actually cuts spending.

Instead his budget boosts spending by 4 percent, more than the rate of inflation. And already, congressional wheeling and dealing has bumped up the baseline to almost 5 percent. Soon it will be 6 percent or 7 percent.

The so-​called surplus is just too tempting for the career politicians to keep their hands off. Return the extra tax money to the taxpayers? Oh my! That would be irresponsible. Not when there’s all this pork to peddle.

My complaint is bipartisan. The Republicans are as profligate with their own favored programs and pork as are the Democrats. How can you stand up to the kid with his hand in the cookie jar when your own hand is in the same darn cookie jar? So it’s just one big non-​stop Demopublican spend-​fest over there in the capital.

And guess who pays the bill, my fellow Americans? Yeah, that’s right. You and me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.