Mistrust of Congress

Jack Ward

I can’t recall using Liberal columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. as a source before, but his opinion column ‘Mistrust puts up a wall’ addressed a vital concern the public has.

The media has constantly reminded us that President Bush’s approval rating is below 30%. But we are seldom reminded that a Gallup poll revealed that even fewer American people have a lot of confidence in Congress. President Bush has no one to blame but himself but the plunging congressional rating must be blamed on the leadership of Senate Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi. Last November, the public voted for Democrat congressional leadership based on promises of change. The 2006 Democrat ‘Six for 06’ agenda devised by Reid and Pelosi, promised additional government programs and expansion of other programs while cutting the deficit.

Instead of working on needed legislation, congress has been wasting time on investigations of the Bush Administration. While these investigations satisfy the extreme Left Wing of the Democrat Party, it does little to solve existing problems. So far the only legislation of significance was increasing the minimum wage. But according to the U.S. Labor Department, the minimum wage affects less than 0.35 percent of the American labor force. While Reid and Pelosi thumped their chests when the minimum wage was increased, the unsustainable entitlement spending continues. It is no secret that both Social Security and Medicare expenditures will devour the entire federal budget if there are no changes made. Yet neither Reid nor Pelosi plan on addressing these unfunded obligations.

The only way to add programs and expand others while saving Social Security and Medicare is to cut benefits or raise taxes. But Read and Pelosi are silent. The public has now seen the Democrat leadership in action and the poll numbers indicate that the public isn’t impressed. Many pundits have attempted to explain the horrible approval ratings for congress, but Dionne has probably identified the cause.

Dionne interviewed Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and discussed the recently defeated immigration bill. During the interview they discussed why the bill failed and public’s perception of government. They concluded that there was a widespread belief that the federal government was too incompetent to enforce whatever tough provisions the bill contained. Bayh pointed out that the public doubted that the government knew “how to make an entirely new employment system work?” Bayh may have reached his conclusion based on a previous Pew Center study that found that a large majority of people felt that things ... “ run by government are usually inefficient and wasteful, and that Washington's presence in our daily lives is too large.” That coincided with what Democrat pollster Stanley Greenberg said, “…the message that government in general is incompetent.” “By failing so dramatically, …they have undermined people's faith in the very instrument that we as progressives want to use to solve problems.” But as Dionne concluded, “The belief that government action is futile ultimately killed the immigration bill, and it could block large-scale reform efforts for a long time to come.”

This realization could jeopardize future big government proposals that the Democrats dream up. The whole purpose of the Liberal/ Progressive/ Socialist message pushed by the Democrats is to develop dependency on government and to expand government to satisfy all those needs. But when the public doesn’t believe that existing programs work, there will only be lukewarm support for these additional programs. This realization is devastating to politicians that exist to create dependency programs.

It appears that the wheels are coming off the Socialism bus. The people, pundits, and political operatives have recognized that the government can not do everything for everyone. Yet politicians want government to meddle in almost everything in your life. What is worse, they have an uncanny ability to come up with ‘solutions’ that only make things worse. When our politicians have such a poor record of solving problems and the people have such a low approval rating for our politicians, is it fair to ask if our politicians have any political legitimacy?

Legendary bard, H.L. Mencken, once wrote “All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.”