We Lack The Will

Does the United States Congress have the political will to do anything meaningful anymore? Passing healthcare reform was a two-year process that swung wildly between the mundane and the shocking, what with the (false) allegations of rationing healthcare and “Death Panels.” The fact that it was hard and required a lot of political will should make me think that we can get big important things done, but I wonder. It was a near death experience for Democrats who voted for it. Many paid with their jobs. Here’s the short list of things the polls say the American people want done.

Arms Reduction

Defense Secretary Robert Gates asks, rhetorically, “How many warships and stealth fighters are enough?” He has a plan to save us $100B over the next couple of years. He’s tired of spending money on Cold War threats. Our military is bigger than the next eleven nations’ combined, and seven of those are our allies by treaty. We have numerous orphan weapons systems the Armed Forces don’t want or need. Defense contractors in a consolidation rush gobbled up the competition and spread their factories and suppliers across as many Congressional districts as possible. They have lobbied (read: paid) Members of Congress to fight for budgets of high-margin projects that support jobs in their districts.

These events were foreseen fifty-eight years ago when President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the American Society of Newspapers with his “The Chance for Peace” speech, which included the following:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

“This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Ironically, this speech pre-dated his “military-industrial complex” speech. Historians think he already knew the battle against the contractors, and their enablers in Congress, was lost.

There is no political will to stop taking the money and reduce the budget deficit in a meaningful way by reducing military spending.

The War on Drugs

Shouldn’t any law that makes criminals out of 42% of Americans be revisited?

Will we ever find political leaders with the courage to do the right thing and stop arresting over 700,000 people each year? It costs a lot of money to roust the citizenry over smoking pot. One of the biggest lobbying efforts against the 2010 California proposition to legalize marijuana came from illegal growers. They know the price will fall and competition will rise on legalization. You might think the lawmakers would want the new tax revenue associated with regulated marijuana sales, but you’d be wrong.

Gun Control

It’s hard to imagine that a simple measure like limiting the magazine capacity of semi automatic handguns would be the least bit controversial in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings. Ditto for re-banning assault weapons. There’s no hunting or self defense rational for either. But the more rabid among us don’t want guns for self-protection. They want guns to make sure they can overthrow an oppressive government. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne are right to ask them: Do you think you’re in an arms race with the U.S. military? If so, should you have the right to keep pace with cruise missiles, nukes, and the like? At what point does this argument get absurd?

Representative Giffords has the bully pulpit and the moral high ground. She’s a gun ownership proponent, so if/when she’s able, you would think she might draw a line between sport shooting, self defense and hunting, and an absolute right to own assault rifles and pistols with huge capacity magazines. Will she do anything to stop the madness? Even in light of the numbers below, no one has dared to cross the NRA except George H. W. Bush who resigned from the organization and denounced them for calling federal law enforcement officers “jack-booted thugs.”

Washington Post/ABC News poll 1/17/11:

53% ban hi-capacity magazines

83% improve gun registry re mental illness

Climate Change

2010 was the hottest year yet. Back in the cooler days of 2007, ScienceDaily cited World Meteorological Organization data saying the preceding decade (1998-2007) was the warmest on record. That’s a bad trend line.

Contrary to what the deniers like Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK) would have us believe, the preponderance of climate scientists (like 99% of them) agree that carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gasses” are heating the earth to the extent that the polar ice cap is melting. It would seem as though conservative, science-based legislation would err on the side of human intervention and enact some braking mechanisms. If we limit carbon emissions and we’re wrong, we’ll have wasted some money. If don’t put the brakes on and we’re wrong, we’ll be going to the Ohio or Pennsylvania Shore instead of the Jersey one.

Term Limits

Below is a petition that’s circulating on the Internet. Emotionally, I am in agreement, but practically speaking, do we need to retain deeper institutional knowledge and memory than this allows?

Still, money is the root of all evil in politics. Special interests keep D.C. cozy for our career lawmakers, and sending them home after six years could short-circuit the process of corruption.

Here’s how mad the people are: Congressional Reform Act of 2011 1. Term Limits. 12 years only, one of the possible options below A. Two Six-year Senate terms B. Six Two-year House terms C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms 2. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office. 3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. 4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. 5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%. 6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people. 7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. 8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves! Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. Damn. People really hate Congress! So, will Congress find the will to defy the monied interests who keep them in power and stop forcing expensive systems on a military that doesn’t want them? Will they have the courage to facedown the moralists’ outrage and stop incarcerating pot smokers? Will they challenge the gun lobby and put in place some reasonable and responsible measures? Will Big Coal and Big Oil keep Congress fiddling as the world, quite literally, burns? And what lawmaker in their right mind would limit the opportunity to be treated like a king by a system awash in cash?

I fear I know the answers.