Here’s another idea for cutting deficit (Nov. 13)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
A White House commission on reducing the federal deficit has come up with some ideas to cut spending and raise taxes. That was to be expected, but one thing was missing from their suggestions:
Send Congress home. I don’t mean send Congress home permanently, but don’t let them go to Washington for more than three months a year. That would mean they would have to live in their districts nine months a year, living under the laws they have passed, and contemplating how a law they might pass could affect their own lives.
Having Congress and the Senate live in Washington nine months out of the year has done us a lot of damage. Washington, D.C., doesn’t resemble the United States of America so much as it resembles Disneyland or Las Vegas. It is a city of illusions, and one of those illusions is that members of the US. House and Senate are better than everybody else. They get the best tables at restaurants, they get the best parking places, people run around doing their bidding. After a little of that, you get to thinking that you are more important than others, and what follows is that you start thinking you also are better and smarter than others. Then, you take it for granted.
The other people you talk to also feel that way, and you reinforce one another. That leads Congress to pass laws they think we need, but don’t.
If the members of Congress were home most of the time, having to make a living (you wouldn’t pay them for staying at home), the lobbyists would have a harder time getting hold of them. Also, we don’t need any more laws. It should be a rule that if you sponsor a new law, you would have to get rid of an old one at the same time.
That’s my idea, I’m sticking to it. When Congress is in recess, mischief decreases.
