Perspective: Is Congressional Gridlock Bad?

It should be clear to anyone following what is going on in our Federal Government that nothing significant will be accomplished during the second term of President Obama. The question is this: Is that bad? According to the Media and Obama himself this is terrible considering the huge problems that the Nation faces. OK, so what are the huge problems?

• Immigration? Since this problem has been festering since 1986, can this be considered a crisis?

• Guns? Inasmuch as most murders are committed with hand guns by black on black in our major cities where hand guns are banned and by an isolated few mentally ill persons who get their hands on someone else’s gun, can this be considered a crisis that Congress could solve?

• Global Warming? Carbon dioxide is considered to be a major factor in greenhouse-caused global warming, so why did Obama fail to get a law passed to reduce it’s production when his party controlled both houses? Does that sound as though the Nation considers global warming a crisis?

• Obamacare? The plan is to provide thirty million persons, who don’t purchase insurance, with medical care mandated by the government program. Since most are young and healthy and decide not to buy insurance, is the need to insure this group a crisis?

• Foreign Policy? Since we now have all the oil and gas we will ever need, is worrying about what to do about the Arab Spring in the Middle East a crisis worthy of our attention and involvement?

The Media and the President are obsessed that the Congress cannot get its act together to work on and develop plans for these so-called crises. But from the point of view of “We the People”, shouldn’t we be pleased with this gridlock? If Congress did indeed create plans to solve the above crises, would you want to bet whether the plans would be ones we would like and could afford?

We have seen this before. Consider how earlier solutions for the aforementioned crises have worked out.

• Immigration: Regan’s plan to deal with limit illegal immigration in 1986 actually resulted in the number of illegals expanding from about 3 million in 1986 to about 12 million today.

• Guns: The ban on high power guns ten years ago did not stop the use of such weapons

• Global Warming: The Government’s selection of such clean-energy “winners” as Solyndra and the other solar energy producers have all ended in financial disasters at enormous expense for the tax payers.

Now, there actually are two crises that need be addressed!

• The National Debt and the Deficit!

• The lack of jobs for the under skilled, coupled with the lack of skilled workers for the high-tech jobs that exist!

The best answer to these two crises is to get the Congress out of the way! The collateral to this is that we don’t want the President to do anything that “We the People” don’t want either.

The less tax payer money spent to solve problems that need not be solved, the more likely we will be able to balance the budget and make inroads on reducing the National Debt. Likewise, the less the Government does to regulate and tax business, the more likely the private sector will create jobs for the unskilled unemployed, and the more likely industry will be able find and train persons to meet the high skilled jobs that are currently expanding faster than there are workers who have the needed training and skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to fill them.

If we understood the principles involved here, we would stop berating the Congress, and instead compliment them for blocking the work that we don’t want. Maybe then their rating in the polls would rise from about 10% to about 90%.

In a sentence, the best news is that Congress is gridlocked and thus can do no harm. And oh, by the way, did anyone ask how the members of Congress got their jobs? That is correct. “We the People” elected them. Now, if “We the People” wanted our representatives to do what the Media says Congress should do, wouldn’t you expect that “We the People” would select candidates who would do what the Media says we should want? Isn’t it just possible that Congress, as a body representing us, is doing exactly what we want done, namely NOTHING?

Oh, maybe if they do NOTHING, they should be paid NOTHING!

Perspective: What Would the Founders Say?

I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think about what is going on with our current Administration. If we still taught Civics and the Constitution in high school, perhaps more of us would be as fearful about government’s power as the Founders were. The Founders feared government so much that they added amendments to the Constitution to protect the people. Consider these:



First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”



Second Amendment: “The right to bear arms shall not be abridged.”



Forth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by Oath.”



Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.”



Let’s begin by listing a few items that we have recently learned about that would have given the Founders concern.



• The Government has obtained access to phone messages and e-mails of certain members of the press without prior notification or Court Warrant.

(1st Ammendment)



• The government wants to register all who own arms. (2nd Ammendment)



• The Government has obtained access to our phone messages, e-mails, Facebook, etc. without prior notification, probable cause or Court Warrant.

(4th Ammendment)



Now, let’s visit some recent actions of the Executive Branch of the government that should give us pause viz a vis the 10th Ammendment.

• Who authorized the IRS to extend their purview to harass certain political groups

• Why is the President expanding the use of drones to kill enemies on foreign soil without informing anyone, including the leader of the foreign country involved?

• Why is the president unilaterally, without consulting Congress, authorizing a tax on coal with the announced objective of shutting that industry down? By the way when his party controlled both houses of Congress, that body voted against this scheme

The Founders would have been appalled at these power grabs by the Executive without congressional approval.

Now it is true that during wartime Presidents such as Lincoln and Roosevelt did exercise extreme powers. In the case of Lincoln suspending the right of habeas corpus in the civil war, and Roosevelt imprisoning Japanese Americans in WWII.



In the case of Obama one does not know if we are war or not. He never labels those who do want to attack us as “Terrorists” and then just recently he announced that the war against Terrorism is over. OK, if there is no war just bad criminals that can be handled by the police, does the Administration have to violate our Constitutional Rights to manage criminal activity? This is the central question that we need to ask ourselves as We the People.



If history were still taught, students would know that this would not be the first time that a democracy was taken over by a dictator. What if Obama, a Solinski protégé, decided he had to abort the Constitution in order to transform the country in the name of “social justice”. Wait, Obama’s campaign pledge in 2008 was that he would transform the country in the name of social justice! Transforming the country is exactly what Hitler had in mind for Germany when he, as duly elected Chancellor of Germany, burned down the Reichstag, the equivalent of our Capital Building, and took over the government. And you know how that worked out!



Now, we can just complacently sit by and watch our government do these un-constitutional things and go about our business in a blasé fashion and just trust the government, or we can demand better answers and better behavior! Remember Ben Franklin’s advice: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty. Our Founding Fathers are probably rolling over in their graves and probably at mach speed considering the complacency of the press and the main stream citizenry.