According to the U.S. Constitution, the United States Congress can set its salary (now $174,000 for both Senators and House members) and add additional funds if needed for travel, meetings, and other job-related expenses. Can you all remember when you could ask your boss for a raise and he gave it to you? No, I don’t remember either!
According to PolitiFact, about half of all Congress members are millionaires, and this Old Codger wonders where all that money came from. I suspect a lot of it came in donations for reelection campaigns, hiding extravagant donations, cheating on taxes, or “forgetting” to record a large inheritance, etc. Plus there are many “dark money” groups floating around. These groups are nonprofit organizations that raise funds to influence elections and they’re not required to disclose the identity of their donors. There are also PACs (Political Action Committees) and Super PACS that have their own set of rules but their aim is to provide funding for a political campaign.
Let’s throw in some independent grifters (con artists) who are in the business of making as much money as they can and who try to avoid reporting it to the IRS. Remember that old song “Twistin’ the Night Away” that was very popular years ago? For today’s version of the song, just change the title to “Grifting the Night Away” and there’s another hit.
There is a lot of money that goes to good causes such as disease prevention, maintaining and/or building roads and bridges, etc. However, a lot of money can go to causes that only support a particular business. For example, the National Rifle Association does its best to ensure you can have your very own assault weapon. Although a majority of Americans would like to have those weapons only for our troops, others don’t think so and the chief supporter of the “Don’t Think Sos” is the National Rifle Association, which spends millions in donations to Congressmen and gun dealers to make sure these weapons of mass killing remain in supply. President Clinton got rid of assault weapons for the public for a period of 10 years but Congress let the bill expire and where do you think all the donations to deny renewing the bill came from? The NRA!
The newly elected Congress is busily touting its new ideas and deletions and I’m willing to give them a chance; however, the new Congress voted to slash IRS funding and I have a big problem with their decision. I realize that many people don’t have anything good to say about the IRS. But my preference would be to expand the IRS especially when it comes to taxes.
My reasoning is that more tax investigators, most notably for the millionaires and billionaires, could do a better job of finding out who is cheating on their tax forms. Look no further than Donald J. Trump who has been accused of cheating on his taxes for years and getting away with it until recently. Let’s make the IRS almost impossible to fool so the rich wizards will think twice before lying and/or cheating on their tax returns.
My other serious point to money talks and progress balks is climate change. We are, according to our scientists, at a stage where we really need to act unless we want parts of our east and west coasts, including Florida, to be underwater within 40 years. And do we want the Midwest to again be a dust bowl? Are the titans of industry going to join together and find ways to reduce the problems climate change is causing and will cause? Or will those same titans crash and burn like the rest of our Earth?
This Old Codger is betting on people and businesses to rise to the challenges we face and not sit back and blab about phony science and then run like Chicken Little to tell the king when it’s far too late and the so-called “doomsday clock” hits midnight.
Bob Derr, the Old Codger, lives in Selinsgrove.