- A Failing Model

The model for keeping your job if you were elected to Congress in the last 5 decades was simply this:

Lie to whoever you have to about whatever you have to so long as you get elected. Once elected, trade favors until you can lay your hands on some federal spending to take place in your district. “Bringing home the bacon” is what they still call this. That money should come in the form of spending on federal projects which you route to key people in your district.

The big paving company CEO who contributed major dollars to your campaign should certainly get something… maybe a highway expansion project. You should get something else for the rest of the construction fols who were so generous as well. But the govenrment does a lot of things now so there is room for everyone. The labor unions who gave you money will have a deal worked out with some large employer to route money to them once you get it attached to some unrelated bill. That can be anyhting really. Your brother in law needed a job so you should get a consulting contract for the company that hired him. And the Dean at the local university who gets you tickets to basketball games whenever you’re in town should get some grant or something. It’s all a game of ‘give and take’, contributors give you money at election time, and you take it all back for them from taxpayers in other districts once elected.

A congressman who came home with hundreds of millions would be called a big success in the past, and he would sometimes literally get his name on the front of the building once it’s finished. Just take a look at the pointless “Frank R. Lautenberg” train station or the countless things named after John Murtha in southwestern PA. This used to be a sign that they were an effective legislator but that model is now failing. These days it’s being viewed more like ‘evidence of malfeasance’. No one, not even the most economically illiterate Democrat, will run with pride on their earmarks record in this election cycle. If the tea party has accomplished nothing else, at least it’s given us that.

There will always be some Americans who think the best thing that could happen to them would be for someone else to take full responsibility for their lives other than them. They believe that politics is the best way to decide the winners and losers, and things like merit and a good work ethic are quaint but useless leftovers from a time that’s passed. To them, congress will always look like a meal ticket.

But for the rest of us, firing people for getting big earmark allocations makes a lot more sense than naming the buildings after them. And if we can’t just send them to prison like any other common criminal, at least this is a step in the right direction.