OPINION:
When our representatives and senators enact laws to better our lives, they don’t have to live under the laws they lay down for the people. The recent health care plan and Social Security offer examples of this trend. They vote themselves personal staff allowances, paid domestic travel, etc. They vote themselves generous raises and possess liberal retirement plans.
Our country’s founders didn’t mean for elected officials to stay in office and enrich themselves. They were to spend one term in office and go back to their homes and live under the laws they had enacted.
James Madison, a framer of the Constitution, wrote in the Federalist Papers: “The House of Representatives … can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society.”
Here’s my question: What’s happened since then?
TIMOTHY D. O’REILLY
Chicago
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