America’s Calloused Millionaire Lawmakers

By James Donahue

In today’s high-tech world, it now takes a lot of money to get elected to high political office. Candidates for even state political jobs must either enjoy great personal wealth and/or depend upon the financial support of secret sugar daddies, willing to pay the cost it takes to win elected office.

Once they are elected to office, especially on federal levels, members of the U. S. Senate and Congress win a guaranteed income, complete with the best health insurance benefits for the rest of their lives. Not only this, but these men and women appear to mysteriously gain great wealth, above and beyond that which they enjoyed before they ever were elected to office. We recently heard it said that nearly every member of the current U. S. Senate can be classified as a millionaire.

These people live a different life style than the normal American we meet each day. They are furnished chauffeured limousines at taxpayer expense. They have their own private aircraft to take them anywhere in the world they wish to go. Their medical insurance benefits are the best that money can buy. Yet with all of this furnished comfort, we constantly hear stories of graft and corruption, of members of this elite number being caught in sex scandals, failing to pay income tax on summer homes and yachts tucked away in exclusive places, or accepting bribes of money and costly vacation trips in exchange for a favorable vote in the interest of a big corporation.

We are sure that not all of our elected legislators are corrupt just as we are sure that some others of them are. The worst of the lot appear to have declared themselves conservative Republicans. A few so-called “blue dog” Democrats are caught up in the mix. We once read of a report by a psychologist who suggested that for some individuals, the possession of great wealth becomes addictive, much like drugs or alcohol. This would explain why millionaires sometimes go out of their way to accumulate even more wealth and seem to lose any conscience as to what they have to do, or who they must hurt to get it.

This, then, appears to be the mindset of the men and women who control the government offices of the nation. And it may explain why the House of Representatives failed last week to vote an extension of unemployment benefits for millions of unemployed Americans who will be running out of this much needed help just days before Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year Holidays. The Scrooge syndrome reigns supreme!

We watch in disbelief as calloused lawmakers play politics with such issues as unemployment insurance, food stamps, aid to schools and financially strapped state governments. We watched the blocking of billions of dollars in promised assistance to the desperate people of Haiti and other places leveled by earthquake, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters. How blackened have the hearts of these elected mostly Republican lawmakers become? Do they hate our Democratic president so much that they are willing to let our nation fall into ruin just because voters took away their keys to the kingdom?

While blocking these expenditures in the name of putting a stop to runaway spending and balancing the nation’s multi-trillion dollar deficit budget, these same lawmakers are pushing hard for an extension of the Bush Administration tax cuts for the rich, legislation that expires in 2011. It is as if the possession of great wealth has blinded the eyes of the people who have their hands on the power. It is as if their first concern is gaining more personal wealth at the expense of everybody else.