Part 1

The simple answer to the question is “POLITICS and POLITICIANS.” Perhaps that is too simplistic; but, in my opinion, it is not wrong. Let me explain. We the People have allowed a system to become entrenched where our elected leaders serve themselves; more accurately, they serve the ideologies and greedy purposes of getting elected and re-elected. In too many cases, this be-comes until death. That need leads to party über alles, cronyism, smoke-filled backroom horse-trading, gerrymandering, indecent compromises, and outright despotism.

George Washington set the example of term limits for the president to avoid the new United States following England’s example, which put its royalty into lifetime tenure with all the attendant evils inculcate in that type of government. The third president, Thomas Jefferson, started the tradition of presidential term limits by refusing to run for a third term in 1808. Everything Washington did obviously set a precedent, but did not necessarily set a new policy. Still, Jefferson’s practices set policy into motion. The country has benefitted greatly from that prescient policy.

Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution, which came into effect with the convening of the First Congress and inauguration of the first President and Vice President in 1789, sets these two officers’ terms at four years and does not prohibit their reelection. Four amendments to the Constitution, ratified between 1804 and 1967, have added additional presidential terms and tenure conditions. Unfortunately for future American government, no term limits are set by the Constitution or other laws to limit office terms for members of the House of Representatives or the Senate. This status has had a trickle-down effect on state and local offices.

What happened to We the People from that poor decision by the forefathers is the inadvertent creation of corruption, excessive power in the hands of a few, political party affiliation and allegiance over the oath of office and the good of the people, and an absolute quasi-policy by every party to avoid consideration of term limitations like the plague.

It also has created built-in devices to perpetuate the status quo in favor of the incumbents. Consider a few examples: Robert Byrd [November 20, 1917 to June 28, 2010], Democrat Senator from West Virginia served from 1959 until his death in 2010 at the age of 92–over fifty-one years. In and of itself, such long service would not necessarily be a bad thing until one considers what he did with that “service,” perhaps more accurately, “self-service.”

Byrd was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1952. He served for six years before being elected to the Senate in 1958. He rose in party and U.S. governmental power to become one of the Senate’s most powerful members. He maintained and magnified his positions as a result of achieving seniority—one of the key evils of how U.S. elective power becomes pervert-ed.

He served as secretary of the Senate Democratic Caucus, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, President pro tempore of the United States Senate, and president pro tempore emeritus. As president pro tempore—four separate times–he was third in the line of presidential succession.

Most importantly for the present article is that Robert Byrd served three different tenures as chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations which enabled him to steer an inordinately great deal of federal money—”pork-barrel spending”–toward projects in West Virginia. Critics ineffectively derided his efforts as pork-barrel spending. Using his power over govern-mental expenditures, he was known to slip in eleventh-hour line items to spending bills that bene-fitted West Virginia. With his lifetime position as the state’s omnipotent elected officer, he filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and early on fostered racism and segregation. He was a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan during the 1940’s.

Without Robert Byrd’s imprimatur, very few spending bills could ever make it into law. As a result, Senators had to come to Byrd’s office, bend on one knee, and plead to get a money bill passed for their state. They had to get some money for their states to assist in their own reelection ambitions. This gave Byrd near-dictatorial power.

Here is a single example. Remember, Byrd was a Democrat. The senior senator from Utah, a Republican–who was the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senator in history (42 years) and the longest-serving U.S. Senator from Utah–saw many of his proposed bills go down to nothing at Byrd’s whim. Finally–after years of kowtowing to the appropriations leader–he went to Senator Byrd and humbly begged for the leader to grant him a favor towards his reelection in the form of allowing a special spending bill to go through, which would give the Utahn bragging rights come election time. It would cost him future favors, but the Utah Senator got credit for getting the bill through.

What came about was a $20,000,000 spending bill to create a thirty-five and half-mile long four-lane seasonal Road to Hanna–an unincorporated community in western Duchesne County, Utah, on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation—carved through the mountains, and an air-port in Provo, Utah, neither of which was something Utahns particularly needed or wanted. The Hanna road is not open for the nine months of winter in the region. It records only an average of about 168 vehicles traveling the road a year.

State Senator Dan Liljenquist—a political opponent–went after Hatch’s longevity in the Senate, which Hatch hailed as invaluable for Utah because of the experience and seniority he has gained. “Sen. Hatch and his generation of politicians have presided over the biggest run-up in debt in the history of mankind. They have voted repeatedly to increase the debt ceiling.”

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Orrin Hatch is said to have a net worth estimated to be $4.96 million. The GOP Senator was able to amass this net worth from very astute investments in the finance, insurance, energy, and real estate, sectors, perhaps a little bit helped by his senatorial positions and insider knowledge. He is also said to have a large number of assets which accounts for more than half of that figure, not the least of which is that for most of his career he was an obvious shoo-in for reelection and spent less than half of his campaign contributions on his campaigns over the decades. Senators and Congressmen get to keep the bulk of left-over campaign funds when they retire.

Or it could be that the man was just extraordinarily frugal and incredibly astute in turning his base salary of $174,000 per year into a small fortune—a remarkable example of the American dream.

Sen. Robert Byrd was an even more remarkable example of that dream. His net worth was $9.0 million at his death, again coming from a yearly salary of $174,000. Now that is something for a young man from humble beginnings to aspire to achieve. Perhaps a career in politics is something to give serious consideration.