It’s been quite a few weeks of fun with our Congress critters. From bills not passing to serial sexual harassers being outed, it’s quite easy to see how some of us just want to be done with it all.
Today, however, I have a series of questions I want you to think about.
- 1. What is the average age of a member of the 115th Congress?
- 2. What is the average age of a member of the Senate in the 115th Congress?
- 3. How long as the average Representative served?
- 4. How long as the average Senator served?
- 5. How long have YOUR reps and Senators served?
Yes, I know. You want to talk about all the sex scandals. Sure, it’s fun to think about how creepy Al Franken really is, but stick with me, we’ll get to that.
We’ve had a rash of bad behaviors on both sides of the aisle. Cramming omnibus spending bills down our throats, over spending, over regulation, check kiting, influence peddling, drug abuse, sexual harassment. All these bad behaviors are symptoms of long term residence in Washington DC. And why are they allowed to fester? Because there are no electoral consequences for any of it.
You and I are simply not doing our jobs. Once we as voters have selected our guy, we tend to just forget that he’s there. Sure, some like SheJack will pop up now and then to remind us how galactically stupid they are. By and large, however, the rest will stay quiet until it’s time to run again.
And don’t kid yourself; for most Congress critters, re-election is the Prime Mover in their lives. Who wouldn’t want to get re-elected? The best healthcare, lifetime pensions, free prescription delivery services, secret briefings, parties, and all the bacon-wrapped shrimp you can eat are available to even the most junior, insignificant representative. In fact, as a newly elected freshman, the leadership will make the re-election decision REAL easy. As one Texas Congressman (Louis Gohmert) noted, he was told on Day One that the most patriotic thing he could do is get himself re-elected. Not cut spending. Not fight for individual liberty. Nope. Get re-elected.
So, now we have an electorate which really doesn’t want to be bothered with paying too close attention to their new representative. They hired the guy—they shouldn’t have to keep watching their employee. And we have the lure of not having to obey the rules Congress sets for the rest of us, endless platters of bacon-wrapped shrimp, and pots and pots of other people’s money.
That’s right, the real power of incumbency is the ability to allocate resources they don’t own to other people. I’m talking about that sweet, sweet government cheese. Because remember, to the Congress critter (and to you, the voter), the real value of the incumbent is determined by how many federal dollars he brings home to his district.
Sure, you and your buddies may bitch and moan while drinking Coors Light that the country’s going to hell in a hand-basket, but when it comes down to solving the problems by throwing out your spendthrift Congressman, you hesitate. Why? Because maybe he’s gotten a new Federal Agency to put in an office in your district, and your single mom, meth addict niece has gotten a job as a barista in the Starbucks located in that building. Or maybe he’s got your loyalty because he managed to get your daughter an appointment to the Air Force Academy. Or maybe he helped straighten out your mom’s Social Security after your dad passed away.
You know what? Multiply your case by 535 and now you see the power of the incumbent. Incumbents can do things directly for YOU. Why on earth would you want to change that?
Getting back to my questions at the beginning. The answers are:
- 1. 58 years old
- 2. 62 years old
- 3. 9.7 years (or almost 5 terms)
- 4. 10.1 years (or almost 2 terms)
- 5. Representative in office since 2005, Senior Senator since 2002, and Junior Senator since 2012.
As a woke voter, I can see the changes wrought by too much time in Washington. My senior Senator started out saying strong things—cut federal spending, tough on terrorism, rule of law, liberty, etc. However, he started doing troubling things—voting for cloture knowing that the bill he said he opposed would pass, just so he could cast a cosmetic vote in opposition. Or doing things to discourage members of the Senate who didn’t act right. Or supporting a candidate who was known to be less liberty-minded over one chose by the voters (Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio; David Dewhurst over Ted Cruz).
My Representative was quite strong when he was in the minority party. But then he resigned from one the last bastions of Liberty, the Freedom Caucus. And he has managed to direct over $556 Million to his district in the last fiscal year along. A HALF A BILLION DOLLARS in one fiscal year. Wow! That’s a lot of bacon-wrapped shrimp. And he’s not running for re-election!!
I hope my junior Senator serves one more term, and then goes on to do something else. I can’t stand the thought of losing faith in him, too.
Now, to be honest, my Washington representative is a pretty good conservative, and he’s not as bad as some, like say, John Conyers of Michigan. He’s been there since 1965. He’s got memory problems. He’s a serial sexual harasser whose accusers have been paid by YOUR tax dollars. And since fiscal year 2008, he’s brought home $5.7 Billion to his district.
It apparently pays to harass your staff.
But guys like Conyers, and Al “Handsy” Franken are just predictable outcomes of a system that reinforces incumbency. So, what’s the cure? As loathe as I am to say it—A Constitutional Amendment on Term Limits. Voters simply can’t be trusted to keep our hirelings in line when said hireling is able to play with other people’s money. And our elected employees can’t be trusted to behave themselves without more rigid oversight that limits their time at the public trough. We need boundaries and consequences, and right now they don’t exist. Constitutional Term Limits might just do that.
Next time we’ll talk career bureaucrats and why that’s a stupendously bad idea. But right now, I’ve got to start prepping Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, we will have both stuffing and dressing, and you’re obviously not from the South if you don’t know the difference.