Congress gets paid for what?

Wow! I must say that I am impressed with the creativity of those who hate or dislike the president. The labels such as socialist-dictator-Marxist-unAmerican-rigger-racist, to name a few, and the blame for everything imaginable.

My doctor will not concur, but I am now nearly convinced that he is responsible for my hemorrhoids. However, if you really want to vent (and, just maybe offer a solution to our country’s problems) you might want to focus on the 535 characters who are supposed to represent us and actually make the laws. The Tea Party folks had it “half right” with their term-limits approach. The problem was that they only targeted the Democrats and played right into the hands of the Republicans. How did that work out? For example, the Montana group didn’t target Denny “do nothing” Rehberg. A recent poll found that  more than 50 percent of Americans believe we should replace ALL 535 of them.

Since memories tend to be quite short for those of us who are into “instant gratification,” let’s go back a few short years; I remember early in the Clinton administration how angry I and most Montanans were when Congressman Pat Williams cast the deciding vote for the $240 billion tax increase. As an instant gratification type then, most of us didn’t pay attention to the $250 billion deficit reduction that was included in the bill. That administration went on to several balanced budgets and for our debt projected to be gone by 2012.

Now, enter our hero, George W. Bush and a Republican Congress. When the budget was basically in balance, they enacted a $1.3 trillion tax cut in 2001 (with no deficit reduction, I might add). Bush then fired Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill for arguing against a subsequent $350 billion tax cut. The administration, for the first time in our history, entered into two wars without enacting a tax increase to pay for them.

Not a Clinton fan, in retrospect I have to admit that George Bush made Bill Clinton look pretty good (morals aside). Surely, the political animals haven’t forgotten this chain of events. However, they have truly forgotten who they represent.

My dad had an old saying that “you dance with those who brung you.” The problem is that those “who brung” our Congress to the dance were the special interests and their nearly $1 billion to get them elected and bribe them in the 2010 election. The partisan divide has become so wide that both parties’ focus is not about doing something for America and its citizens, but about making the other party look bad.

Now there are a few “statesmen” in the Congress, but the overwhelming percentage of them are “politicians,” selling themselves to the highest bidder. Yes, we face many challenges today, but it is going to take a combination of philosophies from the Democrats and Republicans to solve them. The Clinton tax cut and deficit reduction was a bipartisan act. When was the last time we saw one of those? The president agreed with the Simpson-Bowles recommendation, but the other party said no tax increases.

The solution to our crisis is simple: Cut spending, increase revenues and invest in our future. The Republican mantra for the past three years has been to replace our president. Well, let’s go back to the first eight years of this century, and ask ourselves, “How did that work for us?”

Let’s all “cut the nonsense” and demand that our 535 “supposed representatives” start to earn their salary — not their campaign funds — and stop waving a banner for a (either) party that doesn’t care about us.  

Higgins is a resident of Kalispell.