Congressman John Fleming (a Louisiana physician) has proposed an amendment (HR 615) that would require Congressmen and Senators to take the same healthcare plan that will result from any proposed healthcare reform legislation.

So far 91 Congressmen from both parties have signed on to the amendment. That includes Ginny Brown-Waite from Florida's 5th district, the Congresswoman for most of The Villages.

Props to Ginny. She's doing the right thing. Probably not enough to get my vote next year under my new policy of never voting for an incumbent, but the right thing nonetheless.

She is having a Town Hall Meeting,I plan on attending.

When: Monday, August 24th
2:00 – 3:30 PM
Doors will open at 1:30 pm
Where: Minneola City Hall – City Council Chambers
800 US N 27
Minneola, FL 34715


About This Event: U.S. Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite (Fl-05) will be hosting a town hall forum in Minneola, Florida, on Monday, August 24, 2009 to discuss health care legislation currently being considered in Congress. Congresswoman Brown-Waite will be joined by a panel of professionals from the health care industry.

Congresswoman Brown-Waite is a Member of the House Ways & Means Committee where she sits on both the Health and Social Security Subcommittees. The Congresswoman believes that we need to fix Medicare first, preserve the doctor patient relationship, and establish tort reform to eliminate the practice of defensive medicine.

This town hall meeting is an opportunity for 5th district residents to discuss their concerns about health care reform with their Member of Congress.


**Due to space limitations, priority admittance will be given
to residents of the 5th Congressional District**

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
CALL TOLL FREE: 866 GWAITE 5 (866- 492- 4895)
HTTP://BROWN-WAITE.HOUSE.GOV

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Probably not enough to get my vote next year under my new policy of never voting for an incumbent, but the right thing nonetheless.

Just curious, why would you adhere to such a policy? Regardless whether it is Waite or anybody else, if they are doing a great job, why not keep them? Why bring in somebody who might be inferior for the sake of change. Haven't we had enough of "change" lately? Look at what "change" has done to the country.

Originally Posted by Ooper

Just curious, why would you adhere to such a policy? ...why not keep them?

It's taken me a year or so of frustration, observing Congress consume most of their time with partisan bickering and posturing for TV. Then when they do pass some legislation, it usually doesn't take too much investigation to discover that one or another special interests were better served than the public.

I feel very much the same way as substantially more than 50% of the 300,000+ respondents who participated in a CNN poll a couple of weeks ago, rating the 111th Congress a resounding F (for failed).

I have been strongly for term limits and robust campaign finance reform. Congress will vote for neither. I've concluded that leaves it to the voters.

So what it boils down to is that if the American public simply refused to vote for any member currently incumbent in the Congress, we could achieve a 100% turnover of the House of Representatives and a 33% turnover of the Senate in next year's elections. To me, any new group elected could do better than the 435 members of Congress there now, many of whom have been in office for decades. Enough is enough.

Your question highlights precisely why about 96% of the Congress gets re-elected each election, leading to continued partisan bickering, the occasional passage of flawed legislation, and continued frustration on the part of the public. The vast majority of voters somehow seem to believe that "their" Congressman and Senators are OK--it's all the others in Congress who serve themselves before the public and get little or nothing done for the country. The only way to solve that problem is to simply vote out all the incumbents. That's why I intend the policy I mentioned in upcoming elections.

In the case of Congresswoman Brown-Waite, she will be seeking her fourth term in the 2010 elections. It's difficult to find any meaningful impact she has had either within the House or in representing the 5th District. What she has accomplished is the accumulation of the better part of a million dollars in campaign contributions from banks, investment banks and insurance companies. Somehow I suspect that all those moneyed interests have a greater interest in Mrs. Brown-Waite's votes in their behalf than they are in whatever she can do for the good of the country or the people of the 5th District. Having said that, I like some of the things she says she stands for: fix Medicare first, preserve the doctor patient relationship, and establish tort reform, all that in addition to her willingness to share the same health insurance plan as we will wind up with as the result of the planned reforms. But I simply can't square the circle of accomplishing meaningful changes in Congress without replacing all those that are currently serving with such ineffective, even destructive, results.

Yes, it is time for another change...a 100% change if it can be accomplished.

I agree with you 100% for term limits. But to endorse a complete replacement at one time, I believe, is not a good idea. I would love to see a 2 or 3 term office. Eliminate that 50% of the most senior representatives and senators in 2010 followed by the remaining members when their current term runs out. I think there would be just as many, if not more, problems with a complete greenhorn congress than we have now.

Originally Posted by Ooper

I agree with you 100% for term limits. But to endorse a complete replacement at one time, I believe, is not a good idea. I would love to see a 2 or 3 term office. Eliminate that 50% of the most senior representatives and senators in 2010 followed by the remaining members when their current term runs out. I think there would be just as many, if not more, problems with a complete greenhorn congress than we have now.

Congress will not impose term limits upon itself, so it's up to the citizenry to keep situations like 15-20-30-40-45 year congresspersons from happening. We can't complain that congressional approval rating is <20% and them keep reelecting the same folk.

The Founding Fathers never anticipated that being a Member of Congress was going to be a career, complete with retirement program. The 2 and 6 year terms for Congressfolk were meant to allow for seat rotation.

Key point is that under current rule, Congresspersons have full vesting for retirement at five years. That's three terms for House members and one for a senator. Like any retirement package, it grows with longevity.

So, two terms in the House should be enough. One would like to think that there is more than one person in a congressional district who is qualified to that seat. The alternative is like any business - increased retirement costs, protectionism setting in with the incumbent, and worse is the psychological transition of the person from being a resident of their district to being a resident of the DC area where they spend the majority of their time.

I have no complaint with Ms. Brown-Waite's service, but I don't see her (or anyone else) becoming a career representative for this district.

Originally Posted by Ooper

...But to endorse a complete replacement at one time, I believe, is not a good idea....

The problem is, where does the individual voter begin to accomplish even a 50% replacement of members of Congress? We only get to vote for 1 Congressman and 1 Senator in 2010. If the electorate opts to vote "their" representatives back in and rely on everyone else in the country to vote out those that are partisan, ineffective, elderly and sick, and even untrustworthy and blatantly subservient to special interests, we'll have 96% "recidivism" in Congress yet again. It has to start with our personal votes in our own Congressional districts and for our own Senators.

As I said, even though I like many of the issues that Ginny Brown-Waite is campaigning on, six years in Congress is enough. She hasn't elevated herself into any sort of leadership position in the House and her representation of the 5th district has been tepid, at best. She's now qualified for a lifelong Congressional pension and healthcare. As far as I'm concerned, it's time for a change. With all respect to Ginny, I'll be voting for whomever her opponent is in 2010. (By the way, at this point at least, she's unopposed. That's a sad commentary on the democratic system, isn't it?)

We have less of a problem in filling Mel Martinez' seat in the Senate. He's resigned and whomever is appointed to replace him won't have been there long enough to qualify as an "incumbent" in my opinion. In the case of the 2010 Florida Senate race, we should be studying what the candidates stand for and vote for the one most qualified and who stands for most of what each of us believes in. Please note that I have specifically NOT said that we ought to vote for the candidate of one party or the other. The effect of who we elect in the Senate has on the majority or minority parties and how that might affect how the Senate works is a factor to be considered--but only one factor.

is today's headline in the Worcester, MA newspaper, The Telegram.

It's seems that the ailing senior member of the Kennedy dynasty wants the enormously Democrat controlled statehouse to change legislation to allow our Democratic governor to appoint an interim replacement for the Senator if Kennedy vacates office before the end of his term.

Under current law there would be a special election 145 to 160 days after the vacancy.In 2004 the Democrats changed the law to prevent the then Republican governors appointment of a republican, making it harder for the Dems to challenge an incumbent. Now the Dems want to change that law to allow, what the Dems fought against in 2004, the appointment of an interim Senator. It seems that Kennedy feels that the state of Massachusetts MUST be represented by two Senators, I feel because he doesn't want to loose even one Democratic vote in the Senate with a health care bill in the works.

How convenient to want a law changed that was proposed and passed buy the ever dominant Democratic statehouse in 2004 that prohibited what he now wants to do.

The link to this thread is that this is another example of politicians being more concerned with party politics than representing the people. I do feel sorry for his family and his health, but look forward to the end of his endless term of office and an end to the Kennedy dynasty.

Originally Posted by gnu

...another example of politicians being more concerned with party politics than representing the people....

Kennedy is not alone is being too sick to be able to represent the residents of his state in the Senate. Neither he or Robert Byrd of West Virginia have been in Washington very much recently, nor have they voted on much of anything. I'll bet that when the vote comes up for healthcare reforms, they'll wheel them both into the Senate chambers on gurneys in order for them to cast their votes. Somehow, I don't think that this is the kind of democratic representation that the founding fathers had in mind when they so brilliantly crafted the structure of our government.

There may actually be others in the House and Senate who are incapacitated in one way or another and unable to do their jobs as elected officials, but I just can't think of them. Yet, I'd bet if an election was held in Massachusetts and West Virginia tomorrow, both Kennedy and Byrd would be re-elected in landslides. It's the inattention of the public to this kind of thing or their blind voting for a particular party that results in this kind of thing happening. And it happens a lot--as I've reported here, 96% of the members of the House and Senate are re-elected when they run. Yet, after they're firmly encsconced in their comfortable and profitable Washington offices the public rails against them, as in the recent CNN poll. But then, a year or so before the next election, when all the special interest money cranks up the ad campaigns for their re-election, the public forgets and votes them in again.

Nope, in that Congress will never vote for term limits to prevent this type of stuff from continuing, the only choice is for the public to enforce it's own term limits by voting out the incumbents in each election.

[QUOTE=Villages Kahuna;221540]Kennedy is not alone is being too sick to be able to represent the residents of his state in the Senate. Neither he or Robert Byrd of West Virginia have been in Washington very much recently, nor have they voted on much of anything. There may actually be others in the House and Senate who are incapacitated in one way or another and unable to do their jobs as elected officials, but I just can't think of them. Yet, I'd bet if an election was held in Massachusetts and West Virginia tomorrow, both would be re-elected in landslides. [QUOTE]

My point was not that he or anyone else is currently ill or that they probably would get reelected, but the hypocrisy of Kennedy wanting to change MA law, to accommodate his desire to keep Democratic control of the Senate, after the Dems changing the law to keep the Republicans from doing the same thing in 2004. I guess its different when the shoe is on the other foot in MA. Power, not performance, rules in government, both state and federal.

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

...the hypocrisy of Kennedy wanting to change MA law, to accommodate his desire to keep Democratic control of the Senate, after the Dems changing the law to keep the Republicans from doing the same thing in 2004....

I don't disagree at all, Gnu. It's just another example of partisan politics being more important than elected representatives actually doing "the work of the people".

What's aggravating, although difficult to really prove, is that the root cause of all this ugly polarity and partisanship is the members of our Congress scheming to do what they're paid to do by the special interest lobbyists. I don't believe for a minute that the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats are against a "public option" because of firmly-held, high-minded ideological principles, any more than I believe that the Democrats refuse to consider tort reform in the proposed legislation because they are so firmly committed to protecting the rights of citizens to litigate. Nah, one group is paid off by the insurance and drug companies and the other by the trail lawyers.

In the meantime, we have important members of Congress still in office even though they're far too sick or incapacitated to participate in governing the country. Why wouldn't they resign or retire, you ask? Because the K Street crowd needs their votes to satisfy their clients. Simple.

While it may relieve high blood pressure to call for throwing all the bums out, our two party system makes such a proposal unworkable. How many of you on the right would vote for the liberal Democrat who is running against the incumbent? I certainly can't imagine any Democrat who would simply vote for the other party to "change out" the entrenched legislature.

And independents wouldn't vote forcefully either. There are many good legislators on both sides, and many bad ones as well. Reality suggests that the system will never change within the status quo. It's been this way since the Federalists and the anti-Federalists.

Why do we think that America could so definitively change the way people think about politics when we can't even speak the same language on these boards? Without a multi-party system, we are condemned to an endless pendulum swing, within another endless pendulum swing, etc., etc.

Originally Posted by ptownrob

...our two party system makes such a proposal unworkable. How many of you on the right would vote for the liberal Democrat who is running against the incumbent? I certainly can't imagine any Democrat who would simply vote for the other party to "change out" the entrenched legislature....

That's exactly why we wind up with 96% of the incumbents being returned to Congress every time we have an election. People who are dissatisfied with the performance of Congress simply can't draw themselves to replace them. They allow their habitual loyalty to a party or an ideology to overcome the logic of how they really could accomplish a change in the governance of the country.

As far as how "unworkable" it is, you're talking to the wrong person. Even though I voted for Barack Obama and even now don't think his performance has been bad enough to cause me to seek a new President in 2012, I will be voting for whomever is running against him in that election. If it's a Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh ticket, I'll really have to grit my teeth. But they will get my vote without question. Same for Ginny Brown-Waite. I like a lot of what she's campaigning for, but six years is enough. Time for new blood representing Florida's Fifth.

If everyone would do the same, we'd have a chance for some real change in Washington. Most people won't, of course. And 3-4 years from now we'll still have the paralyzed, polarized Congress with the same old Barney Frank's, Chris Dodd's, Nancy Pelosi's, John Boehner's and Mitch McConnell's dominating the evening news and CNN and continuing to serve the special interests and accomplishing little for the people.

I'm only one vote, but I intend to use it even though it probably will be an exercise in continued frustration and disgust. One other thing will be as certain as my votes in 2010 and 2012--you won't find me continuing to debate on this forum with people who had the opportunity to accomplish positive change, but didn't.

Originally Posted by ptownrob

While it may relieve high blood pressure to call for throwing all the bums out, our two party system makes such a proposal unworkable. How many of you on the right would vote for the liberal Democrat who is running against the incumbent? I certainly can't imagine any Democrat who would simply vote for the other party to "change out" the entrenched legislature.

And independents wouldn't vote forcefully either. There are many good legislators on both sides, and many bad ones as well. Reality suggests that the system will never change within the status quo. It's been this way since the Federalists and the anti-Federalists.

Why do we think that America could so definitively change the way people think about politics when we can't even speak the same language on these boards? Without a multi-party system, we are condemned to an endless pendulum swing, within another endless pendulum swing, etc., etc.

Firs of all, that's why primary elections exist. That's the first shot to get the incumbent out. After that, it becomes a question of guts. Would I vote for someone who is counter to my way of thinking? Yes, as long as the person is not party hack and lapdog! For two years, a change sometimes has great value and eliminates stodgy thinking. The real key is to get them in-and-out before they learn how to get rich playing all of us.

Second of all, if there are good legislators, why is there a composite <20% approval rating?

Can anyone name me five in Congress worth a retirement plan?

There is nothing wrong with the two or multi party system. There is a problem when the party leadership has more power than the voters.

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

In the meantime, we have important members of Congress still in office even though they're far too sick or incapacitated to participate in governing the country. Why wouldn't they resign or retire, you ask? Because the K Street crowd needs their votes to satisfy their clients. Simple.