It's "The System," Man

So the party of big government and (though the distinction is entirely redundant) the party of big government corruption has decided to go after the GOP over lobbyist financing of “fact-finding” trips.

But Jack Abramoff is far from the only lobbyist in Washington, and the GOP far from the only party that gets lobbyist money.

Fortunately, we have a handy-dandy website—called “Power Trips”—run by America RadioWorks, some entity which produces programs largely for National Public Radio. This nifty website lists how many “fact finding” trips each person in Congress took from January 2000 to September 2004, where to, how much was spent, and who financed it.

Let’s take a quick fact-finding trip ourselves, shall we?

All told, between 2000 and January 2004 four of the top five lobbyist-financed trip takers were Democrats. 14 of the top 20 were Democrats. 59 of the top 100 were Democrats. And all this during a period in which the Democrats had far fewer people in Congress than the GOP.

In case the general pattern is not yet clear, “Power Trips” offers a stunning tour of the aggregate numbers:

Democratic Party: Number of trips for party members: 3674Total spent on party members: $10,471,578.35Percentage of total spent on party: 54.0%

Independent Party: Number of trips for party members: 95Total spent on party members: $178,281.50Percentage of total spent on party: 0.9%

Republican Party: Number of trips for party members: 2802Total spent on party members: $8,759,848.27Percentage of total spent on party: 45.1%

Again, this was all during a period in which the Democrats had far fewer people in Congress than did the GOP.

So—the unfairly singled out, unfairly maligned, unfairly hunted-down, and unfairly destroyed Jack Abramoff notwithstanding—let’s just remember which party has the far worse addiction to lobbyist-financed vacations.

And let’s remember which party has done the most to try and mend the present system. Back in the 90’s it was a Republican Congress that passed line item veto legislation (which was supported and signed into law by President Clinton):

On April 10, President Bill Clinton signed the line-item veto into law. A historic transfer of power, the move greatly increases the power that the president has over bills passed by the United States Congress.

Rather than signing or vetoing a bill in its entirety, the president can strike specific expenditures from the bill. The veto may be overridden by a two-thirds majority in Congress. The law, to go into effect this January with the next presidential term, presents a tremendous departure from the traditional separation of powers.

The line-item veto, one of the most significant parts of the GOP's Contract with America [emphasis added], has long been sought by presidents. Already law in 43 states, it aids in cutting wasteful spending and balancing the budget. […]

A vast majority of federal spending is for Social Security, Medicare, or other existing entitlement programs, interest on the debt and other items that are unaffected by the new law. Many argue that a line-item veto would target only discretionary spending, which represents a small, and shrinking, part of the budget. This largely unnecessary "pork spending" is under the greatest threat from the law.

The law, thus, is more of an acknowledgment that Congress itself cannot control unnecessary spending. In allowing the law to pass Congress has chosen to give away a certain amount of power for the greater good of the country.

Guess who immediately filed a lawsuit to stop the Line Item Veto Act? Democratic Senators Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y) Carl Levin (D-Mich) and Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.); and Representatives David Skaggs (D-Colo), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

Please note the party affiliations involved—and also please note that Senator Hatfield, the only Republican on the list, was widely regarded as a liberal Republican. He was, you know, a Senator from Oregon.

The Supreme Court threw out the first lawsuit on procedural grounds, observing that pork-loving liberal Congressmen do not have standing to sue in federal court whenever Congress and the President pass a law contrary to the political interests of pork-loving liberal Congressmen.

But then New York City (note—not Salt Lake City or Dallas or Wichita) sued to stop the law. This case stuck procedurally, and the federal courts found the Line Item Veto Act unconstitutional.

I suppose that I agree that it was unconstitutional. (Sniff.)


But, you know what? Had no one filed any lawsuits, we could have all just gone along with the Line Item Veto Act! Pretty much everyone except pork-loving liberal Congressmen thought it was a good policy decision. That’s the thing about unconstitutional laws; all we have to do is all agree that no one file suit! The qestion of constitutionality never comes up unless someone makes a challenge in court. But noooo, the Democrats just had to go and start firing off lawsuits.

But placing blame on individuals or small groups of individuals or entire political parties only overlooks the real proble--which is the system itself.

So long as Congress has virtually unlimited power to regulate any action we take, so long as there are no limits to governmental power, the lobbyists, special interest groups, and pressure groups are going to circle Washington like buzzards, all hoping to snatch up their share of the government-seized handouts and trying to influence the tens of thousands of pages of legislation Congress enacts each year (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations federal agencies enact each month).

To borrow the language of more than one right-wing diva, in 1937, when the liberals gave Congress unlimited power, our democracy was inevitably transformed into a kleptocracy, a nightmare system in which every pressure group is forced to do whatever it can to gain control of the state so as to loot whatever money it from the other pressure groups and then pass the loot on to its own supporters.

In other words, the same demise that has met every great civilization in history.

And the looters and their ignorant, barely-conscious followers may well succeed in destroying this country. To a large extent, they already have.

But America is a concept, not a place or a people. And it is a concept that will not, so long as men and women are free to talk and write, perish from this earth.

And whenever and on whatever continent the next American Revolution occurs—We Americans will know what went wrong, and next time We will know how to get it right.