READY, FIRE, AIM: Can You Get Rich, Serving in Congress?

It seems that certain members of the U.S. House of Representatives, from Colorado — Lafayette Democrat Joe Neguse, Windsor Republican Ken Buck, and Centennial Democrat Jason Crow — have a problem with members of Congress getting rich.

They were among a bipartisan group of 21 legislators who wrote a letter to the House Administration Committee, asking them to push forward a bill that would ban stock trading by members of Congress.

The bill has a clever name:  The Ban Conflicted Trading Act.

Apparently, during the COVID crisis, members of Congress were doing their best to get rich, while the rest of us were merely hoping to get vaccinated.  During the “darkest days of the pandemic,” at least 75 legislators bought and sold Big Pharma stocks, while at the same time allocating billions of dollars to pay those same companies to develop vaccines.

And somehow, the media found out about it.  Oooops.

Plus, the vaccines weren’t even all that effective.  I got vaccinated, and I still caught COVID.  Twice.

“Congress has a fundamental problem in this country, and I recognize it when I go home and I talk to folks in Colorado — people don’t trust us,” said Rep. Buck.  “… I hope all members will embrace this idea that our ethical responsibilities to the American people is far greater than any self-serving interest that we have in this job.”

I will admit, that does seem like a fundemental problem.  People not trusting you.  We all want to be trusted.  Even  criminals want to be trusted.

At the same time, we Americans like to pad our pockets, given the slightest opportunity — and I suppose members of Congress are just like the rest of us.  Except they’re spending billions of tax dollars, some of which might be accidentally slipping into their wallets.   While the average Joe Taxpayer is lucky if he even has a wallet.

But I have to ask.  Why would anyone be willing to spend their time serving in Congress, if they couldn’t expect to get rich?

I mean, with so many other options available.  Like, for example, playing on a baseball team.  You can get really, really rich playing baseball.  Have you seen what some of these players are getting paid?

So it’s taking a risk to try and get rich, serving in Congress.  Because you might not.

Back in 1964, the Pew Research Center asked voters if they trusted the government “to do what was right, most of the time.”  Which is a sensible question.  You can’t expect anyone to do what is right “all of the time. ”

So “most of the time” is a reasonable expectation.

In 1964, 77% of Americans said, “Yeah, sure”.

The Pew folks posed that same question to people last May, and only 20% said, “Yeah, sure”.  And they said it sort of sarcastically.

Of course, back in 1964, Big Pharma wasn’t nearly as Big as it is now.

And when we had pandemics, they were hardly noticeable.  Mostly, they happened in Africa or some place like that.  Indonesia, maybe.  Or Bolivia.

Hard to pad your Congressional pockets when the pandemic is happening in Bolivia.

That’s the worst thing about getting rich off the taxpayers.  People know that you want to get rich — don’t we all? — but then they turn around and stop trusting you.

The Pew folks did this “do you trust the government” survey pretty regularly, and it resulted in a chart with a line that wiggled all over the place.  But mostly near the bottom of the chart.

After things started going to all to hell with President Nixon, the only time the approval rating got above 50% was early in George W. Bush’s administration.  For like, a couple of days, right around 9/11.   Those were special times, when we trusted government to do the right thing.  Which was, to start two wars in the Middle East.

Then the approval rating went downhill, and never recovered.

Maybe we all want to be rich, but maybe we also want to be trusted.

Maybe you have to choose?

Louis Cannon

Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.