Matt Towery's Inside
The Numbers:
Are Steroid Hearings The Best Congress Can Do?
By Matthew Towery
(2/14/08) For every conservative who is irritated that illegal
immigration has never really been addressed...
For every liberal who can't understand why the big oil companies
and their unbelievable profits haven't been reigned in, or forced
to accelerate development of new refineries or energy alternatives...
For every family wondering how their house ended up being worth
less than the cost of the amount of money they had to borrow to
purchase it...
For every American, there should be one raging question today...
No, it's not whether baseball star Roger Clemens had HGH shot into
his rear end, or if his former trainer is lying. Instead, the question
should be, "What possible use do we have for a blowhard Congress
that ducks every critical issue that impacts all our economic and
personal well-being in favor of putting on silly shows designed
to create television ratings for its own members?"
I know, I know: We don't want kids copying their heroes by using
steroids.
We also don't want them copying a lot of other things that the
famous and the not-so-famous are doing in their lives.
But is this really the only useful thing that Congress can take
authoritative action on?
The chickens on Capitol Hill ran away from fixing the immigration
issue last year because it became too hot of a political potato.
They gave the FairTax short shrift, never really delving into a
policy change that could potentially save us from our antiquated
and unfair tax system.
When the roof fell in from a housing boom that we all knew would
go bust and trigger an anemic economy, Congress's answer was not
to fix the system, but to hand out $600 stipends to Americans that
will come -- here's the real shocker -- close to election time.
Then their effect will disappear from the economy in the blink of
an eye.
The last political leader to offer pure political bribery of the
public was presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972, when
he proposed giving every American $1,000. He was laughed into political
oblivion. Now the solution for which he was labeled a liberal nut
is the policy of a Republican president and a Democratic Congress.
Go figure.
At least McGovern's amount, based on the value of $1,000 in 1972,
amounted to a tangible sum that could have turned some families'
financial problems around. But it was labeled a government "handout"
and a quick fix. Today, this paltry stimulus package that Bush and
the Congress put together amounts to the same thing.
If anyone wonders why voters are crawling out of the woodwork this
year to vote in the presidential primaries, they need look no further
than Washington, D.C. This "Beltway Bubble" simply doesn't
get it. I read their esoteric writings on public policy. It's all
hogwash because none of it will ever translate into action. I hear
the elected officials shucking and jiving as they try to run the
clock out on this year's Congressional calendar.
Congress was among the last to recognize the housing disaster,
to see the economy flattening out, and to recognize that Iraq might
not be the dominant issue in the political campaign.
And why? Because they all live in Washington, D.C., and the only
people they talk to are one another. Only when they find a policy
they can comfortably confront, like steroids in baseball, do they
spring into action. (Then there's the case of Sen. Arlen Specter
of Pennsylvania. He apparently feels the compelling issue of the
day is whether some NFL teams are spying on other NFL teams.) Please
give us a break.
We waste money like there's no tomorrow. We tax people until they
are blue in the face. Our big cities have homeless people roaming
the downtown streets at night. Our kids still have a competitive
disadvantage against the rest of the world when it comes to education.
We have a serious drought that threatens an entire section of the
country. Our air-traffic control system is becoming dangerously
archaic. And that's just for starters.
But instead, we have a government, Democratic and Republican, that's
hell-bent on eradicating the world of steroids. An admirable cause
were it not the equivalent of catching a snowflake in a blizzard.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Towery served as the chairman of former Speaker Newt Gingrich's
political organization from 1992 until Gingrich left Congress. He
is a former Georgia state representative, the author of several
books and currently heads the polling and political information
firm InsiderAdvantage. To find out more about Matthew Towery and
read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists,
visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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