BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Philosophy The Nature of Government

Craig,

I agree with all on your list. If our government can fulfill all of them, our nation will be an amazing place to live in.

Regarding #7 on your list, it is apparent that our government has not been fiscally responsible. Its shortsightedness in financial investment is clearly showing in our current economic crisis. However, it would be a difficult task to overcome this issue as you are right, our members in the white house mostly care for their reelection status. There has to be some sort of incentive before they can think with future in mind.

What do you think the citizens can do to change this besides making the right "election choices"?

I think one of the main problems in that the election cycle, particularily of the House of Representatives does not lend itself to long term planning or budgeting. Congressmen and women must plan for reelection every two years, actually less when you consider the length of the election campaign. Within six to nine months after a person is elected to Congress they have to begin concerning themselves with getting reelected within 15 to 18 months. That does not leave much time to accomplish anything especially when you are only one vote out of a total of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and another 100 Senators. As powerful as we might think a member of congress is they are still only one vote out of a total of 535 votes. It is very hard to change things when your are only one voice out of hundreds.

As a member of Congress you might have the greatest idea since the printing press. However, to put it into action you need at least 218 other Representatives and 51 Senators to agree with you. If you can accomplish that you still have to get the President to agree and sign off on your idea. Not an easy thing for anyone to do.

HI Cara and Craig,

I've really enjoyed the posts! Craig, your point about the Congressmen and women really made me think! Our congressmen are our voice, right? They take our needs to Washington, right? Very frustrating that they don't get more time to focus on that!

They are our voice in Congress, Yes. And what we don't realize is many of the things we complain about is that they are doing exactly what we want them to do. We Don't want them to raise taxes, but we want so many services provide to us. We want all those services at the highest level of quality possible. We want to maintain Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Environmental Protection, Consumer Protection, Food and Drug safety, Border Security, Military Defense and so much more. Yet, we don't want to pay more taxes, preferably less taxes, for all these services that government provides us. Is there any surprise that 535 members of Congress can seldom come to a consensus on what the 300 million Americans they represent want and are willing to pay for? Sometimes, because of the schizophrenic messages we the public give to our representatives I am amazed that anything gets done at all.

I never believe in irresponsible tax cuts to help our economy. Yes, it sure is nice to receive $300 or $600 tax relief in the mail from time to time from our government. However, with our current poor consumer habits of spending more than what we can afford instead of saving, the tax refunds can never "boost" the economy as they claimed to do.

I agree that the messages we public send to the white house are so conflicting. The money has to come from somewhere. It's like someone wants to buy a new car and a house next year, but he asks his boss to decrease his salary drastically. It just doesn't make sense, does it?

Ok, enough of this. We are starting to stray from the original topic " What SHOULD be the Purpose of Government?"

I am good at doing that.