No. 5 - Final Thoughts About Congress

To wrap up the end of the first five days of The American Dream Machine, and before we get to the issues in the next posting, we should present some final thoughts about Congress that may help give us perspective. First, Congress is large. There are 435 individuals in the House of Representatives and 100 individuals in the Senate. To enact a piece of legislation from introduction to eventual passage is a very cumbersome, deliberative, and lengthy process. It's a wonder any laws are ever passed.

A large number of Senators and Congressmen come from wealthy backgrounds and never had to personally struggle to feed and house a family, to find a job, or gain health care for their family. A large number of Senators and Congressmen are lawyers, and it appears also that many Senators and Congressmen never had a regular job before becoming professional politicians.

The Senate and the House each have a hierarchy of leadership that is very strong and very influential in deciding what issues are addressed and how it wants its membership to vote. The leader of each house is always a member of the political party that has the majority of members in that house. For instance, the majority of the members of the House of Representatives are members of the Democratic Party. Therefore, since the Democrats currently have a majority in the House of Representatives, a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, is the Speaker of the House.

Senators and Congressmen seem to enjoy playing "Democrats vs. Republicans" as the majority party seems to like to make life difficult for the minority party. It appears that this "game" is often vicious and vindictive and interferes with genuine efforts to improve America.

There probably are other observations that we could make about Congress but we don't need to present them now. They will appear in the issues we discuss in the future. We just thought it was appropriate to present the above to provide a basic perspective before we get down to business.

So, now that we've set the stage with five days of background, we are ready to start with the issues. Beginning with the next posting we will present an issue a day. Hopefully, the issues we present will stimulate your thoughts and emotions so that you will express your ideas to your representatives in Congress. We encourage you also to let us know what you think about this Blog and what issues you think we should cover.