Friday, January 07, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: A protected class

Lawmakers permanently buffered from economic hardships they create

The National Taxpayers Union reports that beginning in 2015, unsuccessful Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, who has made millions as a trial lawyer (and will presumably do so again), will receive an estimated $15,500 per year pension, forever, as reward for his six years in the Senate.

Lawmakers with more than 20 years at the trough -- who were grandfathered in when the last federal pension reform was enacted in 1984 -- do even better. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle's 26-year political career ended with defeat in the November elections, but as a consolation prize he will enjoy an eternal pension that starts this year at $121,233.

Former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri, 63, retiring after 28 years in the House, will begin with an annual pension of $102,330.

No one is proposing that our lawmakers be put on starvation wages, either during or after their service. But the original intent of the Founders was that citizens from all walks of life should devote limited periods of time representing their neighbors in Congress, thereupon returning to their established professions, rather than being ushered into an exclusive and permanent "millionaires' club."

And this is important for a practical reason, beyond concerns of mere profligacy.

Witness the considerable change in outlook undergone by the once ultra-liberal former Sen. George McGovern -- the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972 -- after he left office and tried to make a living in the private sector with a struggling Connecticut hotel.

"(I) wish I had known more firsthand about the concerns and problems of American businesspeople while I was a U.S. senator and later a presidential nominee," Mr. McGovern wrote in a piece for Inc. magazine in December 1993. "That knowledge would have made me a better legislator and a more worthy aspirant to the White House . ...

"I learned first of all that over the past 20 years America has become the most litigious society in the world. ... The second lesson I learned by owning the Stratford Inn is that legislators and government regulators must more carefully consider the economic and management burdens we have been imposing on U.S. business. ...

"Many businesses, especially small independents such as the Stratford Inn, simply can't pass such costs on to their customers and remain competitive or profitable. ..."

We need more people in Congress who have learned those kinds of life lessons. Instead, we are now governed by tax-paid millionaires (and permanent "professional lawmakers") such as Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, who in most cases have never had to make a living under the kind of economic environment they have forged for the rest of us -- and now, likely, never will.