It's almost midnight. Do you know where your vote is?

"No taxation without representation" was the battle cry of the early American patriots who contributed the name of the Tea Party to American lore. Their 21^st century imitators have reached the rather odd conclusion that having representation should exempt them from taxation.

The fiscal doomsday clock is about to strike midnight! Do you know where your vote is? Many of your elected officials gave it away to a special interest group that does not have your best interest at heart. There is no greater abdication of personal responsibility than the so-called “Pledge.” This document is the set of handcuffs, leaving us with neither representation nor the political wherewithal to avoid fiscal crisis.

Taxpayer Protection Pledge I, _____, pledge to the taxpayers of the (____ district of the) state of ______ and to the American people that I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

To his credit Wyoming Senator John Barrasso refused to sign. However, Senator Mike Enzi and Representative Cynthia Lummis are among 235 House members and 41 Senators who have signed.

Senator Enzi and Representative Lummis and most of their colleagues have mortgaged their ability to represent us by signing away the vote with which we entrusted them. Those votes don’t belong to them, they belong to you. Those votes are a sacred trust and are not Enzi’s and Lummis’ to give away. We “entrusted” them with the right to vote in our best interests and instead they signed the right away to a special interest group.

To whom did they give our votes? To a group with a rather lofty name, “Americans for Tax Reform (ATR)” headed by Grover Norquist.  ATR not only opposes all tax increases but also opposes healthcare reform, efforts to halt climate change, and weakening of workers’ rights.  A June 2006 report from the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on the Jack Abramoff scandal alleged ATR was a "conduit" for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to finance surreptitiously grass-roots lobbying campaigns.

ATR is so doctrinaire, its web site today includes a demand that Republican senators working as members of the “Gang of 6” halt efforts to avoid a default on the nation’s debt. “A failure to extend the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 by trading them for broader tax hikes proposed by the President and “Gang of Six” would violate the Taxpayer Protection Pledge” according to a warning posted for “pledged” members of Congress to ponder.

In the interests of transparency, not to mention democracy, members of Congress should include on their self-serving web sites a list of all such pledges they have executed. Wouldn’t you be interested to know to whom they have committed the vote with which you entrusted them? Voters should be loathe to support candidates who have tied their own hands even before taking office. Elected representatives must be open to considering the facts before them at the time an issue is decided and not be bound by a pledge they gave to some special interest group in the heat of a campaign.

Those patriots who dumped tea in the Boston harbor in 1773, demanding “no taxation without representation” could never have imagined that the rights they sacrificed for would be signed away in pledges to special interest groups like Americans for Tax Reform. In a cruel irony, the net result all these years later is that we have “no taxation” (of the wealthy) and we got there with “no representation.”

Now that is worth another Tea Party!

It’s like the boy who murdered both parents asking the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.

All three Wyoming delegates to Congress have signed on as co-sponsors to a proposed constitutional amendment allowing states to veto federal laws and regulations they dislike.

According the Casper Star-Tribune, Rep. Cynthia Lummis said, “I am fighting to return to the rightful owner — the states and the individuals — the power that the federal government has grabbed,” Lummis said in a media release Wednesday. “That is what our founders envisioned, what our Constitution requires and what the people of Wyoming demand.”

There is a noticeable bit of irony in a member of Congress complaining about a “federal power grab.” It’s like the boy who murdered both parents asking the court for mercy because he’s an orphan. If there has been a federal power grab, haven’t these three fault-finders been accomplices to the crime?

But what really ought to demand some explanation is the claim their radical proposal “is what our founders envisioned.” That is true only if what is meant by “our founders” are those who gave us the original Articles of Confederation.” If historical facts have any value in this debate, it should be recalled these “founders” gave us a fatally flawed system of government lasting only a few years.

The Articles of Confederation were enacted by Congress November 15, 1777, ratified  March 1, 1781 and then replaced in 1791 by the Constitution we have had now for 220 years. So, to which of these “founders” do our Congress-people refer? Their proposal to allow the states to veto federal law would cause one to believe they consider those who gave us the short-lived Articles of Confederation to have been the founders. The Articles read as does their proposal. Article II says, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. Article III continued, “The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other….” That “firm league of friendship” was a failure.

Tongue in cheek but not without relevance is the possibility our Members of Congress are thinking of those who established the Confederacy in 1861 as “founders.” The Preamble of the Constitution of the Confederate States actually sounds like what they have in mind.

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

In a more common view, the term “founders” of course refers most accurately to those who quickly recognized the weaknesses the Articles of Confederation tossing them out along with the bath water after less than a decade. Under the Articles, regional differences among the states left the nation disabled then as they would today. The founders who gave us the current US Constitution did so after quickly realizing state’s rights were distinct from the common needs of a nation.

Perhaps things have changed so much that the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the Confederacy make better sense to Senators Enzi and Barrasso and Rep. Lummis. It is, however, a dangerous experiment, a form of Russian roulette. The Tea Party that ultimately gave us a Constitution which survived 220 years of wars, depressions, and Manifest Destiny should not be easily discarded by a Tea Party that has been around for only a couple of long years.

Should Congressional Salaries be means-tested? Why should a person worth 50 million dollars receive a government check for public service?

Can you imagine a job where you get to set your own salary and benefits using somebody else’s money? All the employer knows about your job performance is what you tell them in press releases and self-serving speeches. Not one dime of your earnings is in any way dependent on your performance or outcomes. And your employer is even willing to borrow from China to make the payroll.

It’s good work if you can get it! There are only 535 such jobs in the entire country. Wyoming has been allocated only three of those jobs.

As those three join the other 532 in deciding whether elderly folks will have Medicaid or children at Head Start will have a place to go to school, you should look at what they pocket. It starts with their salary. A member of Congress receives $174,000 dollars a year. That is 2 ½ times the median income of Wyoming families and more than 90% of the earnings of those who vote (or not). I don’t know what raises you’ve seen in the last decade but members of Congress have used your money to give themselves a 30% pay increase. Here is the chart that shows how they have hiked their pay.

1999	$136,700	per annum
2000	$141,300	per annum
2001	$145,100	per annum
2002	$150,000	per annum
2003	$154,700	per annum
2004	$158,100	per annum
2005	$162,100	per annum
2006-2007	$165,200	per annum
2008	$169,300	per annum
2009	$174,000	per annum

Salary is only part of the story. The benefits are eye opening. Members of Congress participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program along with federal workers. However, members of Congress receive additional medical benefits beyond those available to regular federal employees.

For an annual payment of $503, (.003 of their salary) members receive routine care from the Office of the Attending Physician in the Capitol including physicals and other examinations, on-site X-rays and lab work, physical therapy and referrals to medical specialists.

In addition, current members receive medical and emergency dental care at military hospitals and clinics. Outpatient care is free if it's performed at facilities such as Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland or Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District of Columbia. Retiring members continue receiving health care for a contribution much smaller than you and I are required to make under COBRA or other plans.

And the Congressional trough is a pretty good place to be when it’s time to retire. In addition to Social Security, they receive a hefty pension. According to the Congressional Research Service, the average annual pension for a retired member of Congress after serving only FIVE years was $35,952.  Members and their staffs receive a larger retirement benefit than other federal employees and become eligible for a retirement annuity at a younger age and with fewer years of service. They contribute only 1.3 percent with the bulk of the retirement benefit's cost picked up by the employer, i.e. you.

On top of all that some members get free housing by turning their plush DC office into a condominium of sorts!

Now what’s really curious about this enhanced salary and benefit package is that nearly all of the Members of Congress pocketing these public dollars are already millionaires. It was reported last week that Wyoming Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis is the 7^th wealthiest member of the US House with a net worth of almost 50 million dollars.

I have an idea. In that same budget where she and her colleagues propose to end Medicare and severely cut social programs in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy…how about a provision to means test congressional salaries? Programs for the poor are limited by one's income, why not programs for wealthy public servants. Why should a person worth 50 million dollars receive a government check for public service?

As the Bible says, “To whom much has been given much is expected.” During a time when Congress is deciding who else and how much of a sacrifice Americans must make, you’d think they could set an example. To whom much has been give, at least a little bit more could be expected during these tough times.

Lummis says the country doesn’t have “a tax problem, it has a spending problem.” “Well, I’ve heard it before, but it sounds like uncommon sense.”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.’ Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.

From Washington last week came an “epoch of incredulity” in a continuing “age of foolishness.” More than Dickens, an observer might think rather of “Alice in Wonderland.” Certainly, Congresswoman Lummis gets what Alice called, “Curiouser and curiouser” explaining her vote for this budget. Lummis says the country doesn’t have “a tax problem, it has a spending problem.” Alice’s Mock Turtle understood this line of reasoning better than I. “Well, I’ve heard it before, but it sounds like uncommon sense.”

Even more cuiouser and uncommon sense are the words of Lummis’ guru Paul Ryan.  “The spending spree is over,” Congressman Ryan said. “We cannot keep spending money we don’t have.” Unless, he might add, those dollars are used to pay for tax cuts for people who do not need them! “Well, said Alice, “I've often seen a cat without a grin; but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever say in my life!” 

I am unsure whether Lummis is a cat without a grin or a grin without a cat as she and her colleagues spend trillions of dollars to pay for reduced tax rates for corporations and the wealthiest Americans while talking about the need to reduce the deficit. They propose to do that by eviscerating Medicare. They will end Medicare and replace it with a coupon of declining value allowing seniors to go hat in hand to an insurance company in the hopes they can then afford coverage we all know they cannot now afford.

Lummis was 11 years old when Congress created the Medicaid program. She might be excused if she doesn’t remember what it was like for seniors before 1965, though one of her Wyoming peers sent me this email after Lummis voted to end Medicare. "When I was in high school in 1965, before Medicare and Medicaid, my pastor took several of us every Sunday to visit the elderly in the county "poor farm." I remember grey people, in grey beds with grey covers, with trays of congealed grey food, eager for the voice or the touch of a stupid teenager who cared enough to come sing to them and say hello and hold their hand.”

This is more than politics and economics. It’s about moral responsibility. The Catholic Church Conference of Bishops says it well, “A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons. It requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs fair!

Grey people in grey beds with grey food while GE and other wealthy-beyond-your-imagination Americans enjoy tax breaks. That’s what America looks like through Lummis and Ryan’s rear view mirror. But as much damage as it does, their vision doesn’t even add up to a balanced budget. As Alice would say, “Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is -- oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!”