First Step in Returning the Power of Congress to the People

By Terri R. Linnell

Through extensive research I have noticed a repeating cycle which is causing Congress to write bills against the people's wishes. I call it the lobbying/earmark cycle and must of the problems of today can be boiled down to these basic roots. Lobbying with money is bribery, make legal by Congress. Returning the favors with earmarks should not be done. This cycle has altered the focus of Congress away from the will of the people.

The easiest way to examining this question is by following the money in our Congress. The big industries have lobbyists in Washington who give money to our Congressmen. Although I call that bribery, it's all legal thanks to our lawmakers making it legal. Lobbyists fund their campaigns, and our Congress is forever on the campaign trail for the next election. This in turn causes our Congress to create solutions that help the industries over the people. This also causes our individual Congressmen to fund their big contributors with special favors called earmarks. It's all legal, and it's the backbone of today's politics.

Our government has lost it's focus and is seriously out of balance in how they view us. We are not their constituents to take care of like children; we are not their resource for money; we are their boss. -Yet Congress is now driven by money, and the big industry money is standing in between us and our Congressmen. Therefore, to fix this problem we must remove the cycle of lobbying with money, and returning the favor with earmarks, and we won't be able to do so until we stand up, get elected, go to Washington ourselves to fix it.

The big money in Washington will do everything in it's power to fight us. They want unlimited money and unlimited power. We want our government to work for us. Although not all of us want to go to Washington, quite a few people across the nation are willing to stand up and do the right thing, and we, as a country, need to do our best to vote them in. They will mimic us and demonize us to keep their jobs and their power. -Yet this is the first step in righting the wrongs in Washington.

There are still storms on the horizon and a second housing bubble burst to deal with as shown by the chart at this website: http://bp3.blogger.com/_pMscxxELHEg/RxzD0s_7EYI/AAAAAAAABB4/ljDSXZhMG3o/s1600-h/IMFresets.jpg

Pretty incredible huh? We threw the kitchen sink at the first tsunami sized subprime wave, what is left for this one? We're already running our printing presses 24/7 to pay for the last one. We've already borrowed massive amounts of money. How do we deal with this? How many more jobs will be lost?

Actually, there are counter measures we can implement. Bringing our jobs back would be an excellent start. Oops, it won't work. The big industry corporations do not like competition and they will not want us producing our own products that they can produce overseas and ship in to us. In fact, with both inflation/deflation scenarios this is a key issue... and every solution I find ends exactly the same, it's down to the lobbying/earmark cycle.

The big international industries will pull out and ship products in to us while holding the government by the purse-strings to not let us compete against them. Toyota is pulling out now and their plant on our soil will sit empty. Sony is pulling out and their plant on our soil will sit empty. How many of our small businesses rely on imports to do business? If they don't let us reopen those plants and we don't have the money to build our own, what will that do to prices?

Earmarks look good on the surface, but in actuality they are not. We have federal committees, such as defense committees to verify if we need to spend taxpayer money on these projects. We have city and state governments who's actually financially responsible for these projects. Plus, we don't like paying for other people's bridges, so why should we be ok with having others pay for ours? Our Congressmen are not Kings to bestow favors upon us and we do not want them doing so. It's not the American way.

This is why I say, this first step, cutting the purse-strings, is crucial to our future and our economy.