Fact: We all know that our government is dysfunctional and our elected officials have an extremely poor work ethic. Gone from Washington are the ability and the willingness to debate and compromise. Members of the House and Senate are in Washington 100 hours a month, and 100 days a year. When they are in their wings of the Capitol Building, they spend much of their time fundraising and campaigning for reelection.

The idea of continuing to postpone an annual budget to avoid a government shutdown is pure lunacy. Both parties should have been working on a proposal since January of 2017. Instead, they have been wasting taxpayer dollars attempting to repeal Obamacare, and pass “tax reform” which is actually a gift to the wealthy and will increase taxes for most Americans.

One Republican and one Democrat in the Senate are addressing this situation; realizing that a long-term solution is mandatory. Although Congress passed a measure last month increasing the current budget by $300 billion for two years, they have a deadline of March 23^rd to pass an appropriations bill. There is no solution as of today.

Republican Senator from Georgia, David Perdue, tells a sad and unforgivable fact. In the last 44 years; since 1974; our government has passed the budget on-time on only four occasions. They have forced a government shutdown 20 times.

“This is a system that does not allow for active debate. I fought hard to get on the Budget Committee, coming from the business world, thinking this is where the action is. Well, it’s a joke. I would blow the Budget Committee up unless we change some of these rules. Seriously, it does nothing,” Perdue said.

Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, agrees.

“Nobody’s seen it, it’s never been voted on the floor. It just gets jetted straight in. And then six people from leadership and the appropriations chairs go in, and they hash out the deal amongst themselves, and everybody else in the Senate is left being a supplicant, begging and pleading that the thing they want gets in there, with no chance to have a vote on it, no chance to have a debate on it, and that’s not democracy, frankly. It’s a mess. But it does confer a very great amount of power — basically how we spend all of our money gets decided by two handfuls of people in a totally non-transparent environment,” Whitehouse said.

I hope you agree with me about one issue which has moved our nation away from a democratic republic and towards fascism for years. We, the people deserve complete transparency from our government. Labeling everything in Washington as ‘secret’ is, plainly put, bullshit. The truth is that they simply don’t want the American people to know how corrupt our government is. Recently we learned of a congressional ‘slush fund,’ established with the theft of taxpayer money, designed to hush individuals who charge elected officials with sexual harassment.

This is our country, and we must remind those we elect that they are public servants, and work for us. They believe that they have the right to rule over us.

We can do two things which will inform them that they are sorely mistaken; demand term limits for congress; it works for the presidency. Secondly, we must vote incumbents from power, beginning on November 6^th. Republicans have the power today and have not accomplished a single positive act for the majority of Americans in more than nine years and two months.

Encourage everyone to vote; this is the most important election in American history; we are in danger of losing the principles and ideals of our founding fathers. Trump can be removed from power by removing his party’s control of the House and Senate.

Op-ed by James Turnage

SOURCE

Image courtesy of DonkeyHotey

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