We all know that congress can legally steal money from the taxpayers in this country. This loot is distributed to their friends and the congressman gets a kick back. This kickback comes in different forms. It seldom is in cash, however, it may come in the illegal way of buying stocks or getting inside information on a stock increase, etc. Sometimes this kickback is just given to the congressman in the form of political donation. That is the reason why candidates will spend millions of dollars to get a job that only pays about 100 thousand dollars a year. We have no federal congressmen that aren’t millionaires by the time they have served their term in office. They just keep getting richer every year. We are making Royalty out of them. Our leaders are as rich as almost any royalty in the world.

            They steal this money by attaching pork spending to each bill passed into law. These are called “earmarks”.  Perhaps this is why they don’t read the whole bill. If it has their earmark in it than the rest doesn’t matter to them. The president then has to either sign the bill or veto it. He has to accept or deny the whole bill. He cannot scratch the “earmarks” from it.

            Some people have tried to pass a “line item veto” law to give the president power to mark off some of these earmarks and still pass the rest of the bill. In fact, such a law was passed in 1996. Bill Clinton used the line item veto 82 times in 11 bills. The Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that the line item veto law was unconstitutional. Almost every President has asked congress to consider a constitutional amendment to give the President line item veto power.

            There are many very good arguments against giving the President so much power over the legislative branch of the government. However, unless some way is found to keep all of the earmarks out of bills passed by congress, we will never be able keep our tax money from being wasted and our taxes will always continue to rise and the government will get more powerful.

            Only congress can change what is in a bill and they refuse to stop “pork barrel spending” because they are all doing it. It comes down to “if you vote for mine, I’ll vote for yours.” I think this is where the old saying “thick at thieves” got started.

            I believe that other ways can be found to stop these earmarks. One way would be to publicize the items in each bill that are not conclusive of the bill’s main agenda. Another way would be that if the bill is a Federal provision, then nothing for the individual States should be in it.

            Unless we can get our congressmen (and women) to change this idiotic way of added wasteful spending to good bills that are being passed, our country will continue spiraling downward.

            Every time you contact your congressmen about anything, mention this serious flaw in our government.

·                                 "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." George Bernard Shaw (1944)