Founders didn’t envision Congress as a rubber stamp

Founders didn’t envision Congress as a rubber stamp

This is as good a time as any for a member of Congress to be a tightrope walker.

Each has to find a balance between protecting Wall Street from another day of triple-digit losses and from giving away the farm back home.

A congressman is sent to Washington to represent the voters, but not necessary to simply vote with the majority. If this were a direct democracy, we wouldn’t need representatives. All we’d need would be a computer or any other electronic connection to Washington, and we could all vote directly. Actually, Ross Perot envisioned something like that and on first glance it looks like a great idea — except that individuals react viscerally; we need our representatives to act deliberately.

Differing views

Members of Congress also have to find a balance between what they have reason to believe will be best for the country in the short term and the long term. For instance, some Republicans acknowledge that a bailout would provide some measure of economic stability now, but would fundamentally change our free market system for decades, if not forever. Meanwhile, some Democrats voted against the bailout because they couldn’t get past seeing it as a multibillion-dollar reward for multimillionaire financiers.

It’s a representative’s prerogative to vote for the pocketbook or for ideology. It’s the voters’ prerogative to analyze whether their representatives are continuing to represent them.

In the case of the bailout, everyone — congressmen, senators and voters alike — must balance how much they trust the administration and congressional leaders against how much they trust their own less-informed opinions. Clearly, those at the very top have information about the consequences of not acting or not acting that the rest of us don’t have.

Even in a society based on openness, some information is not going to be shared. We’d all love to know which banks or mortgages houses are most likely to be the next to fall. But if that information were more readily available, two things would happen: Those with first access would be in a position to profit on their knowledge and publishing the likelihood of a bank’s failure would virtually assure its failure.

On a seesaw

Monday, after Congress rejected the bailout package, the Dow Jones industrial average went crashing down, losing 778 points at the day’s end.

But Tuesday, the Dow and other indexes recovered about two-thirds of their loses. Absent dramatic news, today is likely to be quiet, but what Congress does or doesn’t do could roil the market’s at the end of the week.

It is the job of every representative and senator to get as much information as he or she can. It is the job of the administration to provide honest insight — and as much information as it can without doing more harm than good.

Then those representatives and senators must vote in what they perceive as the best interest of their constituents and their nation. If they are swayed by a slogan, they are too superficial to serve. If they vote purely on ideology, they are allowing themselves to be blinded. If they hold their fingers to the wind and vote on that basis they are being cowardly.

They have been elected and are being paid to rise above populism, ideology and even personal ambition.

If that sounds idealistic, it is, but the people deserve no less from their representatives in dangerous times.