It’s kind of heartwarming to see Republican Congressional Representatives calling the pork-glutted Democrats to account, both in terms of the effectiveness of their legislation as well as their rather lax standards of ethics. There were times during the last Congress that I believed the Republican Party had been taken over by unprincipled political hacks whose only interest was to stay in power. That’s probably the reason why government spending increased so dramatically, as those Republicans desperately sought to buy votes with taxpayers’ money.
What we are seeing today is a Republican caucus, certainly in the House of Representatives, that’s planning on keeping the Democrat majority honest and calling them on their blatant porked-up spending. What’s more, the Obama administration is now having to sit up and take notice that the Republicans are wide awake and watching, as cabinet nominees like the corrupt tax-cheat Tom Daschle and the equally corrupt Nancy Killefer, who was slated to be the nation’s first chief performance officer, were unceremoniusly removed from consideration. Never mind the White House’s explanation that both asked to withdraw their nominations. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner managed to squeeze by, despite his own $38,000 tax-arrears problem.
The unanimous Republican vote against the nearly $1 trillion bailout package floated by the Democrats was a proper and principled stand, given the fact that only 12% of the bill had any relevance to creating new jobs, while the balance was the biggest spending boondoggle passed by any government in the history of human kind. The bill will no doubt pass both the House and the Senate and will probably be signed into law by the end of next week, but as each day passes, fewer Americans are in favor of it, as Republicans aren’t shy about touting its weaknesses.
The old adage about the corruptive influence of power has never been truer than when the Republicans were in control of both the Congress and the White House. That’s why I am not broken up over the fact that the Republican caucus has been stripped to the bare bones. It’s likely that they got the message the voters conveyed to them last November and from the looks of it, they’ve taken that message to heart.
Klaus Rohrich is senior columnist for Canada Free Press. Klaus also writes topical articles for numerous magazines. He has a regular column on RetirementHomes and is currently working on his first book dealing with the toxicity of liberalism. His work has been featured on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, among others. He lives and works in a small town outside of Toronto.
