Letter From A Constitutent Telling It Like It Is

April 3, 2013

Senator Patty Murray
Senator Maria Cantwell
Washington, DC, 20510

Dear Senator:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly after his retirement.  It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt important - honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of our various governments.  I have served my country, paid my taxes, worked hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and artifacts.
Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at my country and my government.  I shall only point out a very few things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold.  I have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year!  Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers.  So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.

Last year, the president spent an estimated $1.4 billion on himself and his family. The vice president spends $ millions on hotels. They have had 8 vacations so far this year!  And our House of Representatives and Senate have become America's answer to the Saudi royal family.  You have become the "perfumed princes and princesses" of our country.

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. "Obama Care,"  a bill which no more than a handful of senators or representatives read more than several  paragraphs, crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves  from it, substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "one percenters," consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making  3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well as the president and veep)  ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (for which, of course,  you plan to blame the Republicans, anyway).

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know - (1) How to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an  eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain economy of  truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed and  under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote) who are looking  for a handout rather than a job.  Your so-called "safety net" has become a hammock for the lazy.  And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps - pretty much all Democratic voters - and the program is absolutely rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional oversight?

I would offer that you are not entirely to blame.  What changed you is the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves.  It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a leadership role.  To paraphrase President  Reagan, it appears that the second oldest profession (politics),  bears a remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.
As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 - 1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."  I'm only guessing that this applies to the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than Congress?

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we  must purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what  cars we can drive, gasoline to use and what health care we must buy.   Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the consumer more and more every day.

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me "You'll just have to take a pill," while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their families will get the best possible  health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your  Creator, while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of  course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.

The  chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might be generated by them with an auto  signature applied, hoping we will believe that you, our senator or  representative, has heard us and actually cares.  This letter will, however, go online where many others will have the chance to read one person's opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, its  administration and its senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all  the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just  goes on the $17 trillion national debt for which your children and ours,  and your grandchildren and ours, ad infinitum, must eventually  try to pick up the tab.

My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his  or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to destroy this country I deeply love and put  it so far in debt that we will never pay it off, while your lot  improves by the minute, because of your power.  For you, Senator,  will never stand up to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American people.  And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden eggs.  And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.

Sincerely,

Bill  Schoonover
3096  Angela Lane
Oak  Harbor, WA 98277