The Key to Real Reform
By Robert Maynard

One of the dominant themes in this election season is corruption in government. While this issue has received a great deal of attention from perspective candidates, pundits and the media, most of the attention to this issue has been on symptoms of the problem. The real problem is that political power is increasingly being centralized in our nation’s capital. This centralization of political power is what is driving the influence buying that is at the heart of the much-publicized campaign finance and fundraising scandals. A good deal of the money flowing into the political process from both groups and individuals is an attempt to influence the government to grant favors or not to impose restrictions. The government’s ever increasing ability to hand out rewards and punishments has groups and individuals at each other’s throats as they fight over the favor of government. Civility and cooperation are replaced by greed and envy as we push each other out of the way in order to ensure that we get our share of the government provided gravy train. Under such circumstances civic virtue and the compassionate community quickly become causalities in a struggle to get government to take from our neighbor and give to us. If we limited government’s ability to bribe us with our own or our neighbor’s tax money, the influence buying would disappear overnight.

We are putting an unheard of amount of power in the hands of a small political class to affect just about every aspect of our lives. Is it any wonder that the end result is a political leadership that will do almost anything to stay in power? We have all heard of the arrogance of political officials who make laws for the rest of us but do not abide by those same laws. The political class has come to see itself as above the common citizen. They wield a degree of power that would have been the envy of ancient Roman Caesars. If we are really serious about reforming this mess, we need to take a serious look at our own role in enabling this behavior. In order to ensure that we have an ethical government, we must start with ensuring ethical citizens. On what criteria do we base our decision to support a candidate for political office? Is it character and a commitment to support the fundamental principles of government, or a promise to "bring home the bacon"? If it is the latter, then we are contributing to the problem and will never see real reform in government. 

As pointed out by Citizens Against Government Waste’s "2006 Congressional Pig Book Summary":

"The guilty pleas of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham illustrate how pork-barrel projects, whether used as currency for re-election or as political favors to well-connected individuals or businesses, can corrupt the political process.  The historic lack of restraint in the appropriations process has helped create a projected $371 billion budget deficit in fiscal 2006 and a national debt of $8.5 trillion.  Whether the lobbying scandal and the outrage of taxpayers over "bridges to nowhere" will force Congress to cut the pork remains to be seen."

This behavior will continue until the political class is convinced that the outrage of the American Voters over such scandals outweighs their desire for their portion of the pork. 

Vermonters in particular need to take a good look at our Congressional delegation. In CAGW’s Pork Per Capita by State calculations, it was discovered that Vermont delegation delivered $51.52 of pork per person in 2006 against a national average of $30.55 Per Person. That put us in 12th place among all 50 states when it comes to "bringing home the bacon". Although that is an improvement over 2005’s 10th place, we still have a ways to go if we are to become a leader in the effort for reform, rather than part of the problem. In addition to our problem with pork, there is the matter of Vermont constantly receiving more in federal government benefits than it pays in income taxes. Our dependency on federal government handouts flies in the face of our image of independence. If Vermonters are to live up to its image of independence and become a leader in the effort for real reform, we need to change course and send representatives to Washington D.C who are more interested in returning political power back to the people than they are buying the people’s vote with their own, or their neighbor’s, tax dollars.

Decentralizing political power by returning it to the people is a necessary foundation of any effort aimed at REAL government reform. There are other steps that should be made in parallel such as eliminating many of the perks and privileges that set the political class apart from the average citizen. Do we have candidates who are willing to run a campaign ready to pursue a course of real government reform if Vermont’s voters are ready to support such reform? Do we have enough voters who are more interested in ethnical government than in making sure that we get our share of the pork? Enquiring minds want to know.
 

Robert Maynard is the Editor of the True North website