Quote:
Originally Posted by Amputate Your Head
Here's my question: Why the fuck doesn't anyone ever do it?
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Fact is that no matter which president is in office, it is the Congress that has the real power over domestic policy.
Personally I believe that the answer your question lies with Term Limits. Without them, a congressman's job simply becomes doing things that he/she thinks will get them re-elected. Quite often that involves giving money/tax incentives/boosts to pension funds/increases in government benefits/growing bureaucracy, etc, etc, etc... All growing government.
There is no incentive for a politician to make the hard short term choices that might benefit the country in the long term.
If we put term limits into the mix, then their first term would be more involved in living up to original positions taken during campaigns, and then the second would simply be doing what they thought was best to do, since there would be no possibility of re-election, and they would then have to go back to the real world of living under the laws, taxes, and bureaucracy's that they had created. Now they live in congress for 30 years, or at least leave with a life-time pension!
I don't offer it as a panacea, but it would at least be a step in the right direction IMHO.
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