545 people
There seems to be a lot of attention given these days to the 2012 Republican Presidential candidates and the effort to unseat President Obama. While I’m the first to want a new Chief Executive, it bothers me that the election of a new president is treated as the single most important thing facing us this coming year. We Americans are not very bright when it comes to our own legislative process.
It is true that the President proposes things that ultimately make their way into the law of the land and that may seem tremendously significant. But at the end of the day, nobody in the White House has the power to turn propsals into legislation. Does the average American understand that? The citizens of this great country are in fact ignorant of where the power really resides in Washington. I believe the John Q. Public gives far too much credit and places way to much focus on the office of the President, almost as if he were King and could wave his scepter and either implement any law he wants or abolish one that he doesn’t.
AMERICA, please WAKE UP to reality.
I’m all for getting rid of Obama and will vote for virtually anyone else that runs against him. But, if you think you can really effect CHANGE to the mess that this country is in by electing a different President and letting him operate on your behalf, you my friend, are totally clueless!!
So rather than me try to explain our political process I’d like to use an excerpt from someone more proficient at writing than I, a real professional journalist. Mr Charley Reese is a former columnist for the Orlando Sentinel and is very well known for several related columns that he wrote during his time there between 1985 and 2001. It is the last of these, and also his very last column for the Sentinel penned on July 29, 2001, that is quoted below.
545 PEOPLE–By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them..
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
100 senators, 435 in the House, 1 President, and 9 Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but PRIVATE, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 543 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits….. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red ..
If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan …
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power..
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees…
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Which by the way is what the founding fathers had in mind for us to be able to do. So please, JUST DO IT!
