|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Introduction: Congress Under Fire
| Article
# : |
20188 |
|
|
Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
|
| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1992 |
870 Words |
| Author
: |
Editor
|
How angry are the American people about the U.S. Congress? Forty-one percent of the public blames Congress for the country being on the wrong track, while only 18 percent blame the president. Seventy-two percent of Americans disapprove of the job that Congress is doing, nearly double the 38 percent disapproval rating of a decade ago.
What are the American people prepared to do about it? In a significant departure from polls on only a few years ago, just 31 percent of Americans are now inclined to reelect their representative in Congress, while an overwhelming 74 percent favor a limit on the number of years a person could serve as a U.S. representative.
The indictment of charges against Congress grows longer with every new expose of self-indulgence and special privilege. If the 1980s was the "decade of greed" on Wall Street, it was the "decade of scandal" on Capitol Hill.
Members of Congress have been involved in financial scandals, sex scandals, perk scandals, and oversight scandals (i.e., the savings and loan collapse, which may cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $500 billion when all the insurance for failed thrifts has been paid).
Members of Congress have built a wall of advantages and benefits around themselves in their pell-mell desire to stay in office. Spending in support of the legislative branch has multiplied 10 times since the mid-1960s. Congress mails free more than three quarters of a billion pieces of mail every year, a ratio of more than 12,000 responses to every letter received. The average member running for reelection receives approximately $200,000 from PACs (political action committees), but insists his vote is not influenced by such enormous sums.
Congress is universally perceived as an institution more interested in its own survival than that of the nation. It has become in fact a politically unaccountable branch of government urgently in need of reform.
According to political writer Ralph Hallow, the 1991 elections reinforced that public perception, despite the defeat of term limitation in Washington State. Americans are in an anti-incumbent, anti-business-as-usual mood that will translate into limiting terms by legislation or voting for the challengers to incumbent this November.
Nor is that all that needs to be done.
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
