The Republican Congressmen have started a new website where "We the People" can vote to reduce spending - it's the same old game by Bruce West
(libertarian)
Friday, May 14, 2010
This week, with much fanfare, the Republican Congressmen began a new project titled "You Cut." This is a website where five items are listed which the Republicans promise to bring the winning item to the floor for an up or down vote in a drive to reduce spending and bring the deficit down. If I were not so cynical, I would probably embrace this attempt at reducing the deficit, but as it is, I am not impressed. This is a hyped up gimmick that it is intended for use solely as a political game in the usual partisan political manner we have become so well accustomed from our politicians in Washington.
The entire atmosphere around this event is said to involve the people of the districts. It is supposed to be the congressional representatives way of listening to the people of their district and voting in accordance with the views of those in their district. However, as I have seen from Congressman Brady(TX), it is being treated more as a game show or reality game than it is professional representation.
Let's be honest, Congressman Brady has been the representative for Texas for 12 years. If he does not know what the people of his district want by now, he will not learn anything from this poll. In addition to that, the five items that are listed are not chosen by the people, the five items are chosen by the Republican leaders as programs they would like to get rid of. Any of the five programs voted on would be a feather in their cap.
If this game would to be realistic, the issues on the table should come from the voters. I would like to see immigration reform, border control, health care repeal, congressional pay decrease, fair tax, tax reform of any kind. Instead, we are only allowed to vote on such items as removing subsidies from unions and removing funding from presidential campaigns. If this were a well intentioned discussion, there would be items like ending the wars in Iraq, ending funding to other countries, auditing the fed.
So, until I see real issues brought to the floor, I must discount this action by the Republican Party as a gimmick meant to intentionally polarize our elective base and to publicize the inadequacy of our elected officials.
The one valuable item that does come from this action. We now have proof that our elected officials know what we want in the form of smaller government. They chose five items that they know we want and they have been publicizing that they want a smaller government. The issue is, they only want a smaller government on their terms and smaller in their definition.
Another bit of information from this action is that we now know just how inefficient and and lousy our representatives have been. If the only thing it took to get lower spending was a website and game show atmosphere to bring real spending cuts to the floor, our congressmen should have been doing this all along. Why did they not do it? Because they did not want to do it.
I have a better suggestion for a game show. We will call it Congressional Apprentice. We can get Donald Trump to sit all of the congressmen down in the boardroom and ask them why they were so inefficient and voted for such unconstitutional, excessively wasteful spending bills in the past.
The good part of that show is we know how it ends. Anybody that has seen Donald in a boardroom knows the meeting is adjourned with the simple phrase "You're Fired."
I am running for congress as a Libertarian candidate in the 8th congressional district of Texas. I hope to be the one that tells congressman Brady that he is fired!
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