Congressmen Who Rule

Posted by: Brenda Bowers on: November 6, 2008

• In: National News | National Politics | Politics 2008
• 2 Comments

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The Wall Street journal Online     Thursday Nov. 6, 2008

Obama’s Real Opponent
President’s Come and President’s go; Congressional barons are forever
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122593259568103473.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

This is a good article to read for those of us who are not familiar with the members of Congress who actually do the governing of our country.  As I have said so often,  the President  since Richard Nixon and Watergate has had so much power taken away from the office that  anyone who holds the office must constantly fight with Congress to make any changes he may want to make.

My fear is that Obama is as free spending and irresponsible as some of what this article calls the “Congressional Barons”.  In this case having both the Congress and the Presidency  on the same page  could be deadly for our future IMO.

As this article points out however, the last two Democrat Presidents (Carter and Clinton) had to fight their own Congress.  President Obama will have to contend with some powerful Democrats with some seriously flawed ideas for our democracy.

David Obey the House Appropriations Committee Chairman  and his big spending friend Barney Frank Chairman of the House Banking Committee want to cut defense spending by up to 25% which will  cripple our already stretched to the limit military. This will make it difficult for the military to adequately face any threat to our security.   The 25% cut will also impact our disabled veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan by cutting back on the medical services they need so badly.

Chuck Schumer (Senate Democrat) and his friends are already threatening banks if they don’t lend more money instantly under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.   While I agree the bail out was meant so that the banks would have the funds to lend,  I don’t like the way Schumer is heading.  He and some others want to use the bail out funds to buy out and nationalize some large US industries  such as the auto industry.  They also want to use the money to bail out some states such as New York who have spent their way into debt the resembles the irrational spending of the national government.

Our government has already bought into the ownership of troubled banks  and now to go into the  production marketplace as well is truly pushing the wall towards Socialism.  We have seen examples again and again in other countries what happens when an industry is government owned:  they become extremely inefficient and extremely expensive to maintain.  What happened to Communist Soviet Union before the failure of the government in the late 1980’s  should have shown us the fallacy of government ownership of industries.  Our own US Postal System is a prime example here at home of an industry owned and operated by the federal government. The Post Office system is always in debt and is always raising prices while private  companies like UPS and FedEX are making good profits in the  mail delivery business, and doing it much cheaper than the government owned USPS.  In fact more companies are coming on line  as they see room for growth and profits in the delivery of mail.  I can only hope that eventually the private sector will take so much business from the USPS that the USPS ceases to exist.  Of course since once a program or department is formed by the legislature it is NEVER disbanded I suppose the inefficient USPS will continue its greedy tax dollar eating ways for nothing more than handling the governments own mail.

George Miller (House Education and Labor Committee) along with   Jim McDermot ( Ways and Means subcommittee)  are looking at taking over the popular 401k  and federalizing all pensions on the order of Social Security.  Well we all know that Social Security is going bankrupt because the money put into the “trust fund” is taken out and the government then replaces the funds with what will someday be worthless Treasury notes.  This is however a way to get funds for the current Social Security shortfall and push a much larger problem into the future. I wonder however how people will feel about having their 401k savings taken away from them?  This is however a good way to “spread the wealth around” for those of you who voted for Barrack Obama and the Democrats.

John Conners (House Judiciary committee)  is siding with Europeans who want to indict members of the Bush   administration for war crimes.   This is a very dangerous  precedent to set.  Congress voted to wage the war and continued to fund it and now they  want to punish those who were to carry out their instructions because they don’t agree with how things were done.  We are seeing this being done now with members of the Armed Services being tried for murder.  I agree our soldiers must be held accountable for any crimes they commit but  it should be left as it always has been, a matter for the military.  civilian courts can not possibly understand or stand in judgment of a soldiers whose life is on the line and who is forced to make snap judgments.

These are just a few there are more Congressmen whom we need to become acquainted with and watch, because Congress holds the real power. Read the article.  BB

Tags: Congress has the power, Congressional barons, Congressional chairmen