It's amazing to watch how Congress works these day or should I say how it doesn't work. When one of the political parties in Congress have a plan that they really want to get passed, they have a hard time getting everyone in their own party to agree much less the opposing party.
It seems everyone in Congress is handled by one special interest group or another. Instead of voting for their conscience or even for the constituents, their vote is directed by special interest groups. These groups control the money and thus control how congress votes.
When the House of representatives was voting on their version of the health care plan it was interesting to read how many special interest groups from the latino groups to the Catholic Church had their say as to what goes into the bill. At the very least the Church should not be involved with discussion regarding legislation. That will be another post for another day!! Among the Latino groups concerns were issue related to illegal aliens. My question is why? Illegal immigrants are not supposed to be here in the first place!!! They should not be covered either. Once again a topic for another day : )
Now that bill has to go to the Senate to vote on a completely different version of it. Then the bill has to go into negotiations between the two house of Congress and if they can agree on a new bill, it has to be re-voted on by each house. This is how each piece of legislation works it's way through Congress. Wouldn't it be more efficient to have both houses of Congress negotiate the bill together first and then take the final bills back to their respective houses to vote?
On top of the inefficient way of creating these bills there is too much influence by the aforementioned special interest groups and too many back room deals by the congressman themselves that corrupts the process and makes the bill too large and expensive.
Winston Churchill once said the Democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. In this day of email, instant messaging and online bill pay, Congress needs to become more efficient and work more for the people than for themselves and the special interest groups.
