Report back when you're done
Enough.
I want the congressmen and Bush Administration people to get out of Camelot for a few days. Better yet, come on down to Culpeper. There are some people they should meet.
They should meet the people who are packing, getting ready to leave the house that was once their dream home. They bought the house when the good times were rolling. They were forced into family budget decisions that ultimately led to foreclosure.
They should meet the people and families that line up at the food bank operations around town. Many of them are working people doing whatever it takes to get by.
They should stand outside of the free clinic and ask for a show of hands from those who have health care insurance. They should acknowledge these people because it takes guts to live without health insurance. This kind of courage is the product of necessity and survival.
They should see the stores were few people shop and the restaurants where few people eat because money is that tight.
They should be handed an average paycheck for a Culpeper worker and told to live on it for a month. No cameras will document their scratching just to get by. There will be no nightly news sound bites from what they have to say.
They will win or they will lose. Excuses won't cut it in this game.
They should drive an older car because that's all they can afford. They should drive it right up to the gas pump and spend the $75 it takes to fill it. They should worry about the deep, deep gouge that puts in the weekly pay.
We voted the congressmen into office because they made promises.
They said they would put things right. They said they were going to take care of people, help the country get itself back together.
What they have produced so far is pie-in-the-sky nonsense.
Quick. Develop a car that gets umpteen miles to the gallon. That will be a quantum leap in solving the energy crisis.
Question: If such a car hit the market tomorrow, who could afford to buy it?
We're going to do something about this mortgage crisis. We're going to have an investigation, put people in jail if crimes were committed.
In other words you're going to leave thousands of people out on the economic limb while you ask tough questions only when the cameras are on.
Here's a suggestion – Every congressman must disclose a line item account of all the money received from lobbyists. Those congressmen who received so much as a nickel from the real estate industry or the banking industry or the builder associations are excluded from participating in any mortgage crisis or housing bill vote.
Apply that same disclosure to everything. If a congressman has taken money to support a specific agenda or industry whim, they are banned from dealing with legislation that benefits the same.
At the same time the word “oil” needs to banned from the White House vocabulary. The overwhelming majority of the country believes President Bush and his staff are doing everything they can to help the oil industry.
So from now until he leaves office Bush cannot say oil. He cannot tell us he is lifting the ban on offshore drilling because that will make us less dependent on foreign oil. He cannot say oil at all.
We are in this situation because we put ourselves there. Many years ago we had a choice: We could expand domestic oil operations or we could import the stuff. You know which choice we picked. And now we're paying $100 more per barrel than we paid a decade ago.
When Congress and the White House are finished with these chores, they are to report back. We have a few ideas about the overall size and efficiency of our federal government.