No More Career Politicians!

Posted by Bobby Eberle
November 11, 2009 at 9:00 am

When the Founding Fathers came together to craft the Constitution, they brought with them many ideas in which America would be set apart from other nations. First and foremost, the power would reside in the people and not an all powerful king or all powerful government.

The government was divided into three branches so that power could be shared. In addition, the Founding Fathers believed in the notion of a "citizen legislator." The idea of a "career politician" was foreign to them. People were lawyers, or craftsmen, or farmers. They did not make a "living" from politics. As we have seen over the years, regardless of what party is in power... power corrupts. It's time to get rid of the career politician and bring back the citizen legislator. And... there is only one way to do this: a constitutional amendment.

We have seen it time and time again. Someone gets elected with grand plans to help their district, or state, or nation. They go to Washington, DC to do a job, and then they never want to leave. They become part of the system, and the goal then becomes to get reelected for the sake of holding office, not doing the job they were elected to do.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) recognizes this problem and has introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in order to end what he calls "permanent politicians."

"Americans know real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians," said Senator DeMint. "As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buyoff special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power. I have come to realize that if we want to change the policies coming out of Congress, we must change the process itself. Over the last 20 years, Washington politicians have been reelected about 90% of the time because the system is heavily tilted in favor of incumbents. If we really want to put an end to business as usual, we’ve got to have new leaders coming to Washington instead of rearranging the deck chairs as the ship goes down.â€