It seems like an insurmountable task for GOP candidates to take out the liberal fixtures of Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, and Barney Frank in congressional elections, but how about making them part-time workers instead? Perhaps that’s one way to minimize the amount of unpopular legislation coming out of Washington these days. Bobby Jindal thinks so. According to him, it’s about time we slice and dice the number of hours lawmakers have in a work day.
“We used to pay farmers not to grow crops, let's make congressman stay out of Washington, D.C.,” the Louisiana Governor said in an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS. “Our liberty, our wallets are safest when the legislature's not in session,” he added, borrowing the line from Mark Twain.
As Jindal describes in his new book Leadership and Crisis, Twain’s warning was precocious. “Right now, each American ‘owes’ $45,000 on the national debt, and that figure is set to rise much higher,” writes Jindal. “The 2009 budget deficit was nearly the size of the entire federal budget in 2000.”
While Jindal’s proposal may come across as overly ambitious, he points out that for most of America’s existence, Congress was indeed regarded as a part-time institution. In fact, some states, including Pennsylvania, even codified provisions in their constitutions that mandated lawmakers to hold down separate jobs from their legislature duties in order to “preserve [their] independence” and to ensure that they weren’t tempted to use their position of power to rake in personal riches.
"Make [politicians] part-time. Give them term limits. Don’t let them become lobbyists. When they have to live under the same rules and laws they passed for the rest of us, maybe you’d see some more common sense coming out of Washington, D.C. Instead you got a permanent governing political class."
***Stay tuned for more segments of our exclusive interview with the Louisiana Governor, including his thoughts on Steven Seagal, the need for a “smart” immigration policy, and how the administration’s “social justice” approach to fighting terrorists has left the country vulnerable.
