You've Got the Power (page 2 of 2)

Triumph of the Extremes

Earmarks skyrocketed beginning in 1994, after the Republicans took over the House and Senate. Two years earlier, there were a total of 892 earmarks, costing $2.6 billion. By 2005, Congress stuffed a staggering 13,997 into appropriations bills at a price tag of $27.3 billion. While pork spending is nothing new, today's pig is so big it could win a prize at the state fair.

We've reached a point where scarce funds are seriously misallocated and important programs are getting less funding so that picayune projects can prevail. Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund wrote that between 2000 and 2005, the Army Corps of Engineers spent nearly $2 billion in Louisiana -- but less than four percent went to protecting levees. "Over a third of the money went to building a new lock on an underused canal," Fund reported. The sheer scope of earmarks in the past few years is a sharp break with tradition; that it occurred on the watch of nominal fiscal conservatives has left many real fiscal conservatives, like Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, boiling. As Flake wrote recently in The New York Times: "Earmarking has become the currency of corruption in Congress."

Spending hours away from the job and misspending federal tax dollars is bad enough. But what's really crippling our ability to legislate is the line in the sand that's been drawn by the ideologues -- a line that too few are willing to cross. The Democrats are dominated by ardent liberals, the Republicans by committed conservatives. The moderate center has collapsed.

The handful of members whose instincts are centrist face enormous pressure to support the party position, even when it runs wholly counter to their own. And that push for partisan unity makes it hard to deal with difficult issues that require compromise, whether it's immigration or health care or Social Security. In the 1960s, Republican and Democratic moderates were major forces in both the House and Senate. A bipartisan coalition was essential for overcoming conservative opposition to Senate passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Now that compromise is seen as a sign of weakness, do the critical issues of our day have a prayer of being resolved? Or even seriously addressed?

What We Can Do
More than anything, a politician wants to secure your vote -- so use that leverage. Contact the candidate's staff and make it clear your vote will go to someone who's serious about reform. A good test might be their openness to these ideas:

• Insist that Congress mandate extended legislative sessions in Washington. A smart schedule might be to alternate two five-day weeks on and two weeks off for taking care of business back in the home district. To keep those officials focused on working for us, not themselves, they should ban fund-raising in and around Washington when Congress is in session.
  
  
• Congress should require full disclosure of the sponsors of every earmark, and post this information on the Internet for all to see. Lawmakers should also have to declare any financial stake in an earmark.
  
  
• Narrowing the partisan divide is a tougher problem. Hard-core activists have an outsized influence in the primaries, and politicians court them by emphasizing "wedge" issues like same-sex marriage or flag burning, further inflaming voters.

But we might weaken the influence of ideologues by getting more people, who are likely to be centrists, out to vote. Candidates would have to appeal to all these "new" voters in the middle. In Australia, they do something we could try: mandatory voting. Australians who don't turn up at the polls can write a letter of explanation or pay a fine of roughly $15. The result is that 95 percent of the citizens vote -- and the high turnout means a real dialogue in the political center.

Of course, Americans don't like mandatory anything. So we could also try major incentives to get people to the polls, from weekend voting to an experiment (discussed in Arizona) of holding a million-dollar lottery where the tickets are voting receipts.

Many other reforms could help restore integrity and order on Capitol Hill. But the bottom line is that reforms alone can't make Congress functional. Voters have to take action. By turning out on Election Day -- every Election Day -- we can reduce the impact of the extremes and express outrage when Congress fails in its duties to the public. Voter apathy is no longer an option. The stakes are too high.


For more on the challenges to our democracy, read the new book co-authored by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track."

From Reader's Digest - November 2006

 

• • Politicians
• • U.S. Presidents
• Election '08
• Government

• Voting Resource Guide
• Fed up with partisan battles and crooked deals in Washington? Then get off your duff on Election Day.
• 
• A Fractured America?: The Reality of Party Affiliation
• Red State, Blue State. So the media says. But is our country really that divided?
• 
• Bad Laws Getting a Blind Vote in Congress
• Really bad laws are getting a blind vote on Capitol Hill.
• 
• Hog Wild: Stupid Ways States Waste Money
• Fifty million dollars of your tax money is being used to create an indoor rain forest in Iowa. Yep, Congress is blowing your dough again.
• 
• Look Who's Wasting Tax Dollars
• A hard look at the silly and scandalous ways your tax dollars are squandered.
• 
• Rewarding Goverment Employees With Money They Didn't Earn
• How you are rewarding government employees millions of dollars they didn't earn.
• 

“ Remember that the homes you visit during the holidays may not be childproofed. Keep an eye out for danger spots. ”

• See All Tips

• Be Inspired
• 10 Celebrities Who Give Back
• 7 Amazing Stories, $700,000 to Charity
• Virginia Cervasio: Making It Matter
• PLUS:
• Quiz: What's Your Celebrity Cause IQ?