Dangers of a Professional Political Class

Corruption! Talk to the average American citizen and it is likely that they will express extreme disfavor in how the nation is being governed. The government is out of touch, and American citizens know it. America's low opinion of our representatives is shown in the approval ratings of Congress and the President taken by Real Clear Politics. The most disturbing is there polling that shows the majority of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. Yet, when we look at the names of our elected representation and how long they have occupied their positions, we find that the government that President Lincoln spoke of has slipped into history. The government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has been replaced by a professional political class. Holding office is no longer an obligation to serve the people but a career, complete with benefits.

Dr. Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute writes that the answer to this problem is Term Limits for Congress. By forcing members of Congress to return to the economy and job market that they have affected, it is more likely that they will represent the best interests of the people. This would also mitigate the effects of money in Washington D. C. by cutting into the cycle of favoritism and contracts in exchange for re-election campaign funds. Term Limits provides the most effective solution to corruption in Congress.

Further removing themselves from the people, Congress has seen fit to exempt themselves from the very laws they have put in place for the rest of us. One obvious example of this is the Affordable Care Act, which provides members of Congress and their staffers different set of rules from those that the public must abide by. Originally exempted from the law, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa) was able to get a provision included which forced Congress and their staffers to enroll under modified rules. There are many other examples (such as insider trading) that, when brought to the attention of American citizens would create outrage.

And yet the members of Congress who remain firmly entrenched in their position can not be expected to surrender their comfortable positions atop Capitol Hill. This is why Article V of the Constitution allows for the states to act. A new movement to hold a Convention of the States in order to pass several amendments to the Constitution. This includes an amendment that would put Term Limits in place for Congress. Controversy surrounds this movement but as Mark Levin, a leading advocate of the movement to hold such a convention, the federal government will not fix itself.