We need to get Congress on a modified National Guard schedule: One week per month in D.C., the rest as among-the-public public servants, back in their states and districts, as per original intent. Why? Other than that’s what the Founders had in mind? We want it so when they do vote, they fear running into us. Right now they most definitely don’t fear us; they fear their globalist sugar daddies. Put us back in charge of them, at least three weeks out of every month. That’ll fix ‘em. That’ll make them accountable. To us. It’s much harder to screw people you have to look in the eye. And, importantly, it will serve as a self-selecting tool: fewer people with corrupt intent will run for these offices if they know the gravy train and the glamorous life is limited.
Our Founders never intended for there to be a permanent political class. And they most assuredly didn’t intend our “public servants” to be pigs with their snouts fused to the criminally addictive public trough in Washington D.C., there all but permanently, rather than mostly back home, living among the individual Americans they purportedly represent, who are, as John Adams says in the above quote, their “equals.”
But they’re not our equals, are they? If we are entitled to a jury of our peers, surely we are entitled to be governed by peers, yes? Well, one way to help that along is for our leaders to actually live — I mean really live — where their constituents do. At least 75% of the time. As they say in real estate: location, location, location. And though I am reluctant to quote him, Woody Allen had it right when he said 90% of success in life is just showing up.
How can these “public servants” actually serve people they never see, know nothing of, and have almost no meaningful interaction with? These 435 representatives and 100 senators have absolutely no idea how their constituents live anymore, and that’s got to stop. Living among those you serve — really, truly, actually living there — will help solve that. That was, after all, the Original Intent.
But that’s just one part.
We have an additional three-prong problem which came along much later: the perks/PACS (Political Action Committees), the gerrymandering, and the blackmail. They combine to make D.C. The Thing Which Will Not Die.
First, the unequal perks/PACS part:
The base annual salary for all 535 of these Hill denizens is $174,000. Then there’s the $34,000 — tax free —they can claim for room and board. That’s right. Their D.C. rent/mortgage and meals are subsidized. The overwhelming majority of Americans can only dream about such a cushy deal. It would be nice, huh?
Oh, it gets nicer.
Then there’s the so-called “Leadership PACS” which “have essentially become slush funds, and almost every member of Congress has one.” Need a new roof for your house? Kids’ tuition paid for? Or acceptance into an elite university? Your Leadership PAC can pay for it… if you juuuuuust vote this way or that on Issue ABC or XYZ. And that’s just the really big-ticket items. There’s barely a week that goes by in which an elected official isn’t on a plane or in a hotel. Let’s just say their quality-of-life while traveling is a tad better than ours.“Private jets, luxury hotels, and expensive meals are par for the course as a majority of leadership PAC spending strays further from its intended purposes.”
Have you ever flown on a private jet? I haven’t. Do you have a “Leadership PAC”? I don’t. Sure sounds like something I’d like to have though. But I don’t have a vote to sell. Well, one I can meaningfully monetize anyway. Ah well. Some animals are more equal than others, as they say.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Our Founders never, ever intended this.
Second, the self-dealing, map-making pen the parties gave themselves to stay on this gravy train in perpetuity:
As if $174,000 annual salary, $34,000 tax-free room & board, and an unlimited “slush fund” weren’t enough to transmogrify even the most virtuous public servant into a Pig on the Potomac, then there’s the gerrymandered job-security to make sure The Thing from D.C. mutates and lives on forever: “Brazen gerrymandering protects incumbents and prevents the ‘will of the people’ from disrupting the gravy train of handouts and kickbacks.”
And that’s just the Hill. Then there’s the problem of nearly three million federal employees who seemingly can’t be fired without, well, an act of Congress. They desperately need to be de-unionized and scattered to the winds.
Third, and finally, the blackmail:
As if the perks, PACS, and gerrymandering weren’t enough to fuse these barnacles to our bow, then there’s the blackmail. We quote John Adams again and add an anecdote from Tucker Carlson which taken together, say it all:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams October 11, 1798
And from Tucker:
I mean…what else is there to say after that?
The money + the gerrymandering + the blackmail = immortality. Immortal like vampires, with our money and our Liberty as their blood. So let’s drive a stake through their hearts, metaphorically speaking.
Get these people out of Washington D.C. That’s a start. Every time they vote on something it costs us money or Liberty, so let’s limit their opportunities. Then we have to attack all their perks and pacs, but getting them out of the swamp has got to be the first step if we’re ever to reclaim a government by the people, for the people, ever again.
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.