by Bobby Jindal
Members of Congress often behave like kids who at first fight over toys, and then fight just for the sake of fighting. One child doesn’t care if he gets the toy, as long as his brother can’t have it. If you’re a parent, you know what I’m talking about. Both parties frequently care less about achieving some specific policy goal, and more about inflicting a “loss” on the other side. The problem is the American people are the ones who really lose and end up paying the bills.
Congress, in a way, is also like the Middle East—the place is plagued by ancient disputes and grievances. The prevailing attitude is, “When they were in the majority, they did this to us, so when we’re in the majority, we’re going to do this to them.” So they keep on fighting. But remember: for all the vinegar that gets thrown around in Congress, many members are part of a permanent political class that takes care of its own. They might fight on the House floor today, but tomorrow they’ll be opening a lobbying business together so they can take money from both sides.
A lot of congressmen “go along to get along,” but that’s no guarantee of success. I remember sitting in the locker room of the House gym when Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays walked over to then-Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel. Shays was a moderate to liberal Republican who tried hard—many Republicans felt too hard—to work with Democrats. But Shays had just learned the Democrats would drop millions of dollars to defeat him. “Gee,” he asked Emanuel, “what’s this about you pouring a million into defeating me?”
Emanuel put his hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s not a million—it’s twice that. Nothing personal.” Shays basically abandoned conservative principles in an effort to get along with the Democrats. It didn’t work.
Our country is in terrible financial shape, as we compile a massive debt for our children and grandchildren to pay. Right now, each American “owes” $45,000 on the national debt, and that figure is set to rise much higher. The 2009 budget deficit was nearly the size of the entire federal budget in 2000. And by 2012 the size of our debt will exceed our country’s entire GDP. Congress recently voted to raise the debt limit to over $14 trillion. Estimates are that the debt will nearly double by 2020 to $26 trillion.5
To cover this spending, the federal government borrows money from foreign countries, which makes us even more dependent on the Chinese or other powers, and it prints more money, which will lead to inflation and a weaker dollar. And count on your taxes going up—way up. Economist Bruce Bartlett estimates, “Federal income taxes for every taxpayer would have to rise by roughly 81% to pay all of the benefits promised by these programs under current law over and above the payroll tax.”6
We inherited from our parents a better way of life and more opportunities than they had. But our exploding debt means our children may be the first generation in a long time to have fewer opportunities. Families can’t spend more than they earn and neither should their government—it’s not all that complicated. What we need to do is institute a series of radical changes that I would call the “Saving Our Grandchildren’s Inheritance” package.
We start by remaking Congress. First step: make being a congressman a part-time job. When Congress meets, a lot of bad things happen. Astronomical amounts of money get spent; the government takes over banks and car companies; people try to reengineer entire sectors of the economy. Elected officials inevitably feel the need to do something, and they crave the media coverage that accompanies big proposals, no matter how wasteful or destructive. As Mark Twain observed, “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”
Making Congress a part-time job would fundamentally change Washington, forcing congressmen to spend much more time back in their districts interacting with regular people. It would also encourage greater independence by young members of Congress.
Most crucially, under a part-time Congress, congressmen would no longer regard politics as their career. I remember hearing congressmen, as they accepted some dubious favor, whine, “Well, my colleagues from law school are now making these big salaries at law firms.” It’s as if they are doing us a favor by serving in Congress. If they want to go try to get a big salary at a law firm, fine. But public service is different—it should involve at least a modicum of sacrifice.
Why not pay members of Congress to stay out of Washington? For decades we have paid farmers not to grow crops. We should pay congressmen a decent salary and then deduct money for every day Congress meets in session. This would certainly be cheaper to the taxpayer than the cost of the schemes Congress concocts in Washington.
Plenty of solid research shows Congress feels the need to do something when it’s in session. Looking at Congress over a 25-year period, Professors Mwangi Kimenyi and Robert D. Tollison discovered the more time Congress spends in session, the longer and more complex laws become, and the more money Congress spends. (In a related study, it was found that rain makes the ground wet.) Another study found the same dynamic in state governments: full-time legislatures—California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, among others—all rank near the top in per capita spending and tax burden.7
Here’s another revealing study: two finance professors, Michael Ferguson and Hugh Douglass Witte, discovered that more than 90 percent of the capital gains in the Dow Jones Industrial Average occurred when Congress was out of session.8 Obviously, Congress is not the only factor here. But investors, it seems, know a sitting Congress is bad for business.
I’m also a supporter of term limits. Some conservatives oppose them, and their academic arguments can be quite compelling. But we simply will not change Washington with the same people in charge year after year.
We also need to change the manner in which Congress operates. America’s finances are in chaos because Congress, regardless of which party is in power, engages in irresponsible spending. We can’t expect them to operate the same way every year and produce different results. So we need a series of what I would call Fiscal Sanity Initiatives if we want to turn things around.• We need a federal balanced budget amendment. Most states already have to abide by these limits, and Washington should do the same. Certainly a supermajority could authorize temporary spending during wartime or other extraordinary events, but we need to eliminate deficits during normal times.
• We should adopt a constitutional amendment to require a supermajority in Congress to raise taxes, along with a pay-as-you-go rule to help enforce a balanced budget amendment.
• A supermajority should also be required for government spending that exceeds historical norms as a percentage of GDP. And we need automatic sunset reviews on all discretionary spending programs to help consolidate and eliminate obsolete programs. As Ronald Reagan once put it, the closest thing to eternity on earth is a government program.
• The president should have a line item veto to restrain spending and reduce the corrupting influence of earmarks.
• We need to prevent the packaging of bills in order to force congressmen to vote on individual issues. There is no reason to continue allowing consideration of huge bills with numerous initiatives rolled into one. Congressmen currently avoid accountability by claiming they didn’t want to vote for all that crazy spending and those crazy regulations, but they had to, since those measures were attached to the “save puppies and apple pie” legislation they really liked.
A lot of these ideas have been discussed before, but they have not been tried in Washington. It’s not that this stuff can’t be done. Here in Louisiana, for example, we have shown that these ideas can work. We cut the 2010-2011 budget by 14 percent, billions of dollars, to ensure that we live within our means.
Because Congress regulates so much, spends so much, and has such large staffs, the legislative process is often enshrouded in secrecy. Favors for lobbyists are snuck into large bills at the last minute to avoid public scrutiny. In President Obama’s so-called “stimulus” bill, for example, few members of Congress even knew what they were voting on; the bill literally h
ad handwritten notes on some pages when it was passed.9 And it turned out that the bill made it possible for AIG executives to get large bonuses. Like the American people, congressmen themselves often discover what is in a law only after it’s been approved.
Furthermore, we need other reforms to increase Congress’s transparency. Members often vote for bills comprising hundreds of pages that no one, including staff members, has entirely read. Of course, the American people are also kept in the dark until after these bills are approved. A lot of congressmen would probably stop introducing bills altogether if everyone could plainly see what’s in them.
Despite promises from both the Democratic Congress and President Obama of a new era of transparency, the legislative process has become particularly murky since the Democrats gained control of the House, Senate, and presidency. Like the massive, ever-changing stimulus bill, the healthcare reform bills were a travesty. House members repeatedly complained about not having enough time to read the language in the thousand-page healthcare bill before they were to vote—and one-sixth of our economy was at stake.10
In addition to curtailing our national debt and boosting transparency, the reforms outlined above would help break up the permanent political class that spreads around money and favors to corrupt previously well-intentioned individuals. This problem plagues both Republicans and Democrats. I remember standing on the House floor listening to some colleagues discuss the charges being leveled against California Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham, who resigned in 2005 and pled guilty to bribery, mail fraud, tax evasion, and other charges. One junior colleague asked, “Hey, can you believe all that Duke Cunningham stuff?” And this senior Republican began arguing, “Well, don’t buy into a lot of that hype. There’s more to that story.” He was trying to say, “Hey, look, he’s one of our guys, so he’s really not that guilty.” I was stunned. I thought, “There’s something wrong when we excuse this kind of behavior.” The cesspool has become a hot tub.
The intoxicating power of Washington fuels the sense of entitlement that pervades Congress. Consider the case of the late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican who apparently accepted gifts from an oil services company called VECO, which also organized the extensive remodeling of the senator’s home. Stevens denied this was a gift, claiming he didn’t even know a lot of extra work was done on his house.11 Now let me ask you this: when was the last time any contractor did more than you paid him to do? I have yet to have a contractor tell me, “Well, I had nothing better to do today, so I threw in an extra staircase for free.”
More recently, Congressman Charlie Rangel, then-chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, was plagued by scandals including tax evasion, owning three rent-controlled apartments and using a fourth as an office, and accepting corporate funded junkets. 12 Do I need to add more names to the list?
The Republican Party professed to be a party of outsiders when it took over the House in 1994. And it was. But Washington changed them. Far too many came to Washington complaining about the stench and later used it as cologne. Republicans have made excuses for behavior they would never accept from Democrats. That is part of the price of joining the permanent political class.
Even aside from cases of outright corruption, the sad truth is that serving in Congress is now often an apprenticeship program for lobbyists-in-waiting. I remember seeing former members of Congress on Capitol Hill pushing some new legislation or program for some new client of their lobbying firm. They reminisced with sitting congressmen about their days in the Chamber like aging high school football players recalling their glory days on the field. These politicians-turned-lobbyists exploit their political access to cash in on what was supposed to be public service.
Not only do former congressmen lobby, but family members of serving congressmen lobby as well. The wives of Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad are both registered lobbyists.13 Others have children or sons-in-law who are registered lobbyists. They all promise not to lobby their own family members, but in reality these relatives invariably have instant access.
Lobbyists constantly bombard congressmen with changes they want made to the law. Let’s face it, the stakes are high. With the federal government intruding into everyone’s business, companies that didn’t need lobbyists twenty-five years ago now need high-dollar representation in Washington, lest Congress pass some arbitrary law that devastates their business. Consider Microsoft. For years, the company properly dedicated its time to winning market share. But when the Clinton Justice Department threatened it with anti-trust lawsuits, the firm felt the need to hire a team of lobbyists to protect itself. Now you have to rent a ballroom to hold a meeting of all the Microsoft lobbyists. Wouldn’t it be better for corporate America to spend its time winning customers and making the economy grow instead of currying favors or protection from Congress? Sadly, hiring a lobbyist is often the best investment a firm can make in America today. A University of Kansas study found that each dollar spent lobbying on the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act secured $220 worth of benefits. That’s a 22,000 percent return on investment!14
A few simple reforms would go a long way toward reigning in the corrupting influence of lobbying. First, we should force former congressmen to wait five years before becoming a lobbyist or government consultant or whatever they try to call it. Second, we should explicitly ban family members of congressmen or senators from lobbying at all.
Of course, Congress is unlikely to regain public confidence until it restores sanity to our nation’s finances. But these changes would help send the message that members of Congress are looking out for the American people’s best interests and not their own.
Serving in Congress used to be just that—an act of service, not a financially lucrative training ground for lobbyists.
Our Founding Fathers envisioned that being a member of Congress would be a part-time job. Pennsylvania’s state constitution even had a provision calling for members of the Legislature to “have some profession, calling, trade, or farm, whereby he may honestly subsist.” Otherwise, they feared legislators would come to rely on politics as a career, and they would be unable to “preserve [their] independence.” Back then, farmers would literally leave their fields and go to legislate in our nation’s capital.
Benjamin Franklin argued for keeping congressional pay low, because he didn’t want Congress to attract lazy or greedy people. As he put it at the 1787 Constitutional Convention,There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects. Place before the eyes of such men a post of honor that shall at the same time be a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it.
A mere glance at Washington today reveals Franklin’s foresight.
Franklin’s notion of service and sacrifice was deeply embedded in our earliest political leaders. George Washington came out of retirement three times to serve his country—each time out of a sense of duty, not profit-seeking.
Look at Thomas Nelson Jr., who signed the Declaration of Independence and served in the Continental Congress before being elected governor of Virginia. Nelson lent large sums of money to support the war effort and was never repaid. During the battle of Yorktown, he even urged General Washington to fire on his own house, the Nelson House, which the British commander General Cornwallis was using as his headquarters. Nelson offered to give five guineas to the first man to hit the building.
Thomas McKean of Delaware also signed the Declaration of Independence and served in the Continental Congress. He wrote to John Adams that because of his sympathies, “the consequence was to be hunted like a fox by the enemy, and envied, by those who ought to have been my friends. I was compelled to remove my family five times in a few months.” But McKean felt it was all worth it. You have to wonder how many current me
mbers of Congress, who can’t even stand being inconvenienced by the police, would accept such hardship for the sake of their country.
Lewis Morris of New York was a prominent land owner who also signed the Declaration of Independence and sat in the First Continental Congress. When warned by his brother Gouvernour Morris of the danger of signing the Declaration, Morris replied, “Damn the consequences. Give me the pen.” When the British occupied New York, they looted and burned down his home.
For almost two hundred years, being in Congress meant holding down another job. As recently as the 1950s, Congress was still largely a part-time institution. Aside from extraordinary times such as World War II, members arrived in Washington by train in January and left in the summer. But Congress became more ambitious in the 1960s with the explosion of government spending and regulations. The power and importance of congressmen vastly increased, as the number of Senate and House Committees and Subcommittees mushroomed to enact the Great Society programs. With all the new money suddenly sloshing around Washington, interest groups sprang up demanding their piece of the pie. And they hired lobbyists to make sure they got it. Living under the same rules they enact for others may deter members of Congress from regulating our economy to death.
Granted, a part-time Congress would face its own ethical issues. How can we avoid conflicts of interest when people simultaneously run a business and pass laws? How could we prevent businesses from hiring congressmen just for the sake of influence? The answer is simple: full disclosure. Let the voters know everything, and they can render their judgment at election-time.
Some of my former congressional colleagues will not like this chapter, but most won’t have time to read it. Many of them believe every congressman has a responsibility to defend Congress’s reputation. I completely agree. But the only way to defend Congress’s reputation today is to reform the whole institution, returning it to the limited, honest, and transparent role for which the Founding Fathers designed it.
