Tuesday, March 17, 2009
535 members of Congress and the Constitution
by
Molly the Robin
Applying the Constitution seems to be very difficult, for many of you have different ideas about what the Constitution actually says. Does it mean that freedom of speech can be restricted by "caging", a practice where police separate by fences peaceful protesters from those who need to observe the protests? Do regulations on freedoms restrict those freedoms? A good rule of thumb is that any restriction on the people ought to be made upon the government authorities as a check and balance.
All the restrictions on Constitutional rights and all spending issues emanate primarily from 535 members of Congress. If the country is in financial trouble or disarray it is those 535 members of Congress who are responsible and accountable. If the country's policies, foreign and domestic fail, the accountable body of government is Congress, for they have the purse strings of all branches of government. Your Congress through its spending powers can begin and end wars, begin and end government departments and begin and end the mountain of waste and inefficiency in government.
Failure and success of your country ultimately resides in your Congress, those 535 members. Failure and success of the country is their true legacy. The costs of Health care and Social Security are unsustainable, but why? From my reading in libraries, if your members of Congress had simply established an account for each of these benefits since the 1960s there would be sufficient funds for these programs. But your members of Congress decided long ago to spend money gained from these programs for the general fund adding it to the pool of available funds for government salaries and budgets for all those other optional departments of government. Your members of Congress will have caused the financial shortfalls in Health care and Social Security in the near future by apparently not doing their jobs and failing in their oaths of office.
An effective and resourceful U.S. Congress might have and, in my view as a bird, could have created a basic universal health care system with the vast sums expended on health care by the government. Instead, it became primarily a profit center for insurance companies and a burden for private companies as well as incurring hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and corruption within the U.S. health care system. It is as if the Congress has no responsibility once laws and regulations are in place to review them, a mark of irresponsibility and a substandard work ethic as well as a lack of ethics in providing the best and most effective government for the American people.
When will members of Congress of both political parties-republicans and democrats be called to account to balance the national budget and allocate resources for their financial obligations to the citizens of the country? How much mismanagement and waste can a government sustain before there is a financial collapse system endangering all the citizenry of the country?
Our flock has greater diversity of participation in our governing lives than your Congress and we can address failure easily while you flounder and wallow in it for long periods seemingly unable to make beneficial and constructive change.
by
Molly the Robin
Applying the Constitution seems to be very difficult, for many of you have different ideas about what the Constitution actually says. Does it mean that freedom of speech can be restricted by "caging", a practice where police separate by fences peaceful protesters from those who need to observe the protests? Do regulations on freedoms restrict those freedoms? A good rule of thumb is that any restriction on the people ought to be made upon the government authorities as a check and balance.
All the restrictions on Constitutional rights and all spending issues emanate primarily from 535 members of Congress. If the country is in financial trouble or disarray it is those 535 members of Congress who are responsible and accountable. If the country's policies, foreign and domestic fail, the accountable body of government is Congress, for they have the purse strings of all branches of government. Your Congress through its spending powers can begin and end wars, begin and end government departments and begin and end the mountain of waste and inefficiency in government.
Failure and success of your country ultimately resides in your Congress, those 535 members. Failure and success of the country is their true legacy. The costs of Health care and Social Security are unsustainable, but why? From my reading in libraries, if your members of Congress had simply established an account for each of these benefits since the 1960s there would be sufficient funds for these programs. But your members of Congress decided long ago to spend money gained from these programs for the general fund adding it to the pool of available funds for government salaries and budgets for all those other optional departments of government. Your members of Congress will have caused the financial shortfalls in Health care and Social Security in the near future by apparently not doing their jobs and failing in their oaths of office.
An effective and resourceful U.S. Congress might have and, in my view as a bird, could have created a basic universal health care system with the vast sums expended on health care by the government. Instead, it became primarily a profit center for insurance companies and a burden for private companies as well as incurring hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and corruption within the U.S. health care system. It is as if the Congress has no responsibility once laws and regulations are in place to review them, a mark of irresponsibility and a substandard work ethic as well as a lack of ethics in providing the best and most effective government for the American people.
When will members of Congress of both political parties-republicans and democrats be called to account to balance the national budget and allocate resources for their financial obligations to the citizens of the country? How much mismanagement and waste can a government sustain before there is a financial collapse system endangering all the citizenry of the country?
Our flock has greater diversity of participation in our governing lives than your Congress and we can address failure easily while you flounder and wallow in it for long periods seemingly unable to make beneficial and constructive change.
