Watching the recent shenanigans in congress unfold, I am struck by how much these elected representatives seem to be acting against the best interest of taxpayers in their district.
It is the nature of our system that everybody gets to represent their interest with lobbyists in Washington, and this current health care legislation is a long shopping list of deals cut with all these different groups. You can almost mark on the calendar when the sundry back room deals get cut, or fail in the press releases (AMA , AARP, et al). One question that is welling up in me, is who is representing me (us) the taxpayer?
That is presumably the job of our elected representative. Our leverage is supposed to be that we vote him/her out of office if they don't please us, but it is becoming harder to simply lump all voters together as being taxpayers. The progressive shifting of tax burden from the majority to minority feels like "taxation without representation" for this minority, so I understand the sentiment of the tea party participants, but technically they are incorrect. They are represented but in simple democracy minority viewpoints get the hind teat. The majority of voters can simply vote to continue shifting their tax burden onto others (until they kill the golden goose). It is their short term self interest, and how most humans act. It is the job of the senate, our upper house, to have the sense to do what is in our long term best interest and not be swayed by short term popular thought. If the true majority of the country actually understands what their leadership is embracing, then more power to them, our flexible government system at work. OTOH if it is a minority viewpoint, within the current majority seated in the legislature, opportunistically promoting their minority agenda, it needs to be resisted.
It seems taxpayers on their way to becoming a minority, need organization (taxpayers union http://www.ntu.org/ ) lobbyists too. We need to hire people to represent us, especially when it is in the legislators own self interest to cater to some other majority.
We have one thing on our side... taxpayers are often politically interested and reliable voters. The recent governor's races showed how unreliable the coat tails were from all the independent and new voters in the 2008 election. It will be interesting to see how the marginal votes in congress shift as time goes on and more public inspection of the proposed policy occurs. This is a bill that will not look better as time passes, they will keep rushing to pass it sooner rather than later, to avoid this thoughtful inspection. At some point these marginal seats in congress will become more afraid of us, than their party leadership, and come around.
Only 46 shopping days till christmas... but less than 365 until mid term elections... I can't wait. It won't come soon enough for me.
JR
caveat.. I am not a joiner, so no nothing about NTU beyond googling them.
It is the nature of our system that everybody gets to represent their interest with lobbyists in Washington, and this current health care legislation is a long shopping list of deals cut with all these different groups. You can almost mark on the calendar when the sundry back room deals get cut, or fail in the press releases (AMA , AARP, et al). One question that is welling up in me, is who is representing me (us) the taxpayer?
That is presumably the job of our elected representative. Our leverage is supposed to be that we vote him/her out of office if they don't please us, but it is becoming harder to simply lump all voters together as being taxpayers. The progressive shifting of tax burden from the majority to minority feels like "taxation without representation" for this minority, so I understand the sentiment of the tea party participants, but technically they are incorrect. They are represented but in simple democracy minority viewpoints get the hind teat. The majority of voters can simply vote to continue shifting their tax burden onto others (until they kill the golden goose). It is their short term self interest, and how most humans act. It is the job of the senate, our upper house, to have the sense to do what is in our long term best interest and not be swayed by short term popular thought. If the true majority of the country actually understands what their leadership is embracing, then more power to them, our flexible government system at work. OTOH if it is a minority viewpoint, within the current majority seated in the legislature, opportunistically promoting their minority agenda, it needs to be resisted.
It seems taxpayers on their way to becoming a minority, need organization (taxpayers union http://www.ntu.org/ ) lobbyists too. We need to hire people to represent us, especially when it is in the legislators own self interest to cater to some other majority.
We have one thing on our side... taxpayers are often politically interested and reliable voters. The recent governor's races showed how unreliable the coat tails were from all the independent and new voters in the 2008 election. It will be interesting to see how the marginal votes in congress shift as time goes on and more public inspection of the proposed policy occurs. This is a bill that will not look better as time passes, they will keep rushing to pass it sooner rather than later, to avoid this thoughtful inspection. At some point these marginal seats in congress will become more afraid of us, than their party leadership, and come around.
Only 46 shopping days till christmas... but less than 365 until mid term elections... I can't wait. It won't come soon enough for me.
JR
caveat.. I am not a joiner, so no nothing about NTU beyond googling them.
