Don’t Negotiate, Mister President

My neighbor (we both live in the Richmond Metropolitan Area) and majority leader in the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, appeared as a guest columnist this week in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and lambasted the President of the United States for his unwillingness to negotiate with the Congress on issues relating to the federal budget and the national debt. 1 That’s what Mr. Cantor says, but if you read his opinion carefully you will see that his real complaint is that the president has not negotiated on its terms with one political party in one chamber of the Congress. But, let us not quibble. There have been a goodly number of people out there who have adequately criticized Mr. Cantor’s guest column. That is not what this maven wants to talk about.

In his column, Mr. Cantor asserts that many of this republic’s presidents have been faced with a Congress controlled by an opposition party and that all of them have been successful leaders because they have negotiated with that opposition. Only President Obama refuses to negotiate and is therefore a bad leader. I could do an exhaustive study to check on Mr. Cantor’s accuracy. After all, this country has been blessed with lots of mediocre and bad presidents and many of them did not lead successfully at all. But it is not for this maven to challenge this historical conclusion uttered by the product of one of Richmond’s finest private schools. And again that is not what I want to talk about. 

What I do want to talk about is this sentence from Mr. Cantor’s guest column: “The president not only has refused to negotiate on issues of debt and spending but also has mocked the very idea of engaging with Congress.” Again, I will agree with Mr. Cantor’s assessment, although as a life-long and loyal Democrat I could argue. What concerns me is Mr. Cantor’s belief that this president, or any other president, has a constitutional or any other responsibility to negotiate with congressional leaders of the opposition party. I certainly cannot find such a responsibility in the Constitution.

What I find surprising is that the drafters of the Constitution said so little about the legislative process. Although there is lots of space in the Constitution dedicated to setting forth the extent of the powers of the Congress, this is all the Constitution says about how legislation is to be enacted:  

“All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.”

Article I, section 7.

Nowhere is there mention of the actual legislative process—that one chamber enacts a bill and sends it to the other chamber; that the other chamber can agree with the bill, can reject the bill, can substitute its own bill; that if the chambers are not in agreement they will meet in conference, and that only when each chamber passes the bill in identical language is it sent to the president for his approval or veto. (I suppose the drafters assumed that the process was implicit in the language they used and didn’t need to be specified.)

But, Mr. Cantor, nowhere in this description of the legislative process does the Constitution state that a president has any roll other than approving or rejecting a bill sent to him by the Congress. There is no mention of him or her being required to negotiate with leaders of the opposition party. However, maybe we have to look elsewhere in the Constitution to support Mr. Cantor’s belief. Let’s look at the article dealing with the powers of the executive branch.

The Constitution says:

“He [the president] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper…”

Article II, Section 3.

So, the president shall report to the Congress on the “State of the Union”, may recommend legislation to them, may “on extraordinary Occasions” call them into special session, and if they cannot agree he can adjourn them. But, again, there is no mention of negotiation.

I am unable to tell when the practice of the president negotiating with members of the Congress began. Mr. Cantor says that as recently as 1995 President Clinton and Speaker of the House Gingrich worked overtime to reach a bipartisan agreement that ended a debt/government shut down crisis at that time. But he does not say “as early as”, so we don’t know who was the first president to do so.

The idea that a president should participate in legislative negotiations as the head of his party is not in the system that the drafters of the Constitution designed for our republic. In fact, it is more like the British system in which the Prime Minister is both head of government and head of his or her party. The drafters, instead, based our system on separation of the legislative, executive and judicial functions. Article I, section 1 of the Constitution says “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”  Article II, section 1 says “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Article III, section 1 states “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

The Constitution provides for three separate branches of government that interact only in the few instances that the Constitution specifies. Therefore, for a president to negotiate over legislation with congressional leaders changes the delegate balance of power that the drafters so carefully structured. 

But, Maven. Why mess with something that is working. What is the downside with the president and the Congress getting together to work out the terms of legislation? 

First, looking at recent history, especially the last several weeks, demonstrates that the negotiation process is not working.  

Second, allowing the president to participate in the legislative process gives him or her greater power than the Constitution envisioned. Making the president a kind of super legislator contradicts the Article I language quoted above that all legislative powers should reside in the Congress. The careful structure of separation of powers allows the president to propose legislation at the beginning of the process and to approve of or veto legislation passed by the Congress at the end, but not to participate in the deliberations involved in its enactment.

Third, there is only one President of the United States. She or he is elected by voters in all of the states. Each member of the House of Representatives is elected by only one four hundred thirty fifth of the American electorate. Each Senator is elected by the voters in only one of fifty states. The party leaders in each chamber, including the Speaker of the House, are chosen only by the members of their own party, usually for having survived longer than the other party members. Negotiations between a president and congressional leaders therefore are necessarily between people of unequal power.

Fourth, in the present historical context, we have a president who is personally detested by a significant minority of the population. That minority has managed to elect members of the Congress both in the House and the Senate. These members seem to be more concerned with weakening this president and in depriving him of any historical legacy than in governing. In this context, having the president participate in negotiations makes it less likely that they will succeed, because the motivation of some of the negotiators will be to embarrass the president rather than to reach a reasonable compromise. 

So, this maven recommends that the president return to the constitutionally described process and refrain from negotiating with members of Congress on the content or language of legislation. On the other side, the Congress should move back to the constitutional process and stop pulling the president into the legislative process. In each chamber, if there is disagreement on legislation, the leaders of each party should negotiate with each other to try to reach agreement. If the two chambers disagree on legislation, their differences should be ironed out in a conference. This process has worked for centuries and can work again if implemented.

 

 

Slick and Well-Spun, But the Same Old Cantor

To this maven the greatest scourge of television is the advertising. That is why I much prefer to watch just about any show “On Demand” rather than when it is initially broadcast. Then I can “fast-forward” through all of the ads. (Actually, I’ve become quite adept at switching back to “play” just when the show resumes.) Unfortunately, some of the networks have become aware of the maven’s viewing habits and have now disabled the “fast-forward” function for “on-demand” viewing. So, alas, I am stuck watching the ads.

Just the other night, while catching up on an episode of “Awake,” which I can’t yet decide whether I like (although I am fascinated with the idea of leading simultaneous alternative lives), I was suddenly stuck in an ad. Since we are temporarily between elections, I assumed it was a commercial rather than a political ad. Since it started with statements from Richmond-area businessman, I was sure that the ad was selling the product or service for which they are known. But it quickly became apparent that they were really selling small business. All of these entrepreneurs were telling me that small businesses are the backbone of the American economy and that small businesses create most of the jobs in our country. Then they were telling me that because of high federal taxes and unreasonable federal regulations small businesses were not making enough money—money that they intended to use to create more jobs. And, suddenly, it was a political ad. Only Congressman Eric Cantor understands the importance of small business and he is introducing legislation to cut taxes and regulations on small business and we should all support Congressman Eric Cantor by reelecting him in the fall.

What a great ad! By the end of it I was ready to go marching down Broad Street with a sign extolling the wonders of small business. I was ready to take down the “Kane” sign in my front yard and put one up for Eric Cantor. I was going to go farther than that—I was going to renounce my life-long commitment to the Democratic Party and declare myself a Republican. Wow! It was like the high I get when I increase the dosage of anti-depressant I am taking. It was much better than champagne.

What an epiphany! All my life I had thought that people went into business to make money. And I also thought that they used that money to buy a nice house or two, two or three luxury cars, and several yachts or they went on long and glorious vacations and wore designer clothes and the like. Boy was I wrong! Now I knew the truth. People, especially small businessmen, go into business not to make money but to create jobs so that other people can buy all those things. Businessmen are not greedy! Rather, they are altruists. And, if it were not for that despicable federal government that has the audacity to tax and regulate them they would create even more and more jobs. And to think, I needed somebody like Eric Cantor to tell me the truth.

Well, dear reader, even the greatest high starts to wear off in time. So, very quickly the Cantor-induced euphoria started to fade and I started to feel the onset of the inevitable hang-over. I started getting this feeling of déjà vu. Hadn’t I heard this message before? Is this any different from that stuff that conservative Republicans started feeding us in 1980 and that then-presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush called “Voodoo” economics? Isn’t this just trickle-down economics in a new package? As the conservative message goes, if we cut taxes for the wealthy they will put more money into circulation, which will expand the economy and eventually some of that wealth will make it down to the less-affluent, like you and me. Isn’t this the same stuff that little “W” Bush and his loyal supporter Eric Cantor imposed on us for eight years, a time in which the rich got richer but in which everybody else was lucky just to break even?

And, of course, nowhere in the ad does Mr. Cantor explain how he plans to pay for these additional tax cuts. Mr. Cantor and his Republican friends in the Congress claim to be interested in reducing our national debt. Yet they are constantly advocating reducing taxes on the wealthy and on businesses. Don’t they realize that reducing tax rates inevitably results in decreased revenues to the government which necessarily increases the national debt? Wasn’t Mr. Cantor watching during the years when his party controlled both the presidency and the Congress and tried their “tax-cutting fixes everything” philosophy and nearly doubled our national debt? Wasn’t he watching, or was he too busy trying to become the leader of his party to pay any attention to governing?

Also dear reader, let us not forget the second part of Mr. Cantor’s wonderful ad: we must eliminate federal regulations to allow small businessmen to engage in their favorite pastime—creating new jobs. Again I must ask whether Mr. Cantor was paying attention during those years that his party was in control of Washington. His president and his party’s leadership in Congress convinced us that federal regulation of business was costly and unnecessary. His president and his party in the Congress drastically reduced federal regulations. That reduction in regulation resulted in businessmen engaging in risky practices that produced the financial crisis of 2007-08. That crisis produced the most severe economic recession since the 1930s. Is this the type of policy that Mr. Cantor urges us to return to?

On balance, I have to conclude that Mr. Cantor has issued a great political ad. It is slickly made and places a great spin on Mr. Cantor’s ill-advised policies. The wealthy out-of-state contributors to Mr. Cantor’s campaign fund clearly are getting their money’s worth. And, it’s nice to see Mr. Cantor actually spend his campaign funds on getting reelected for a change, rather than spending them to purchase his party leadership position. I would only recommend that an additional disclaimer be attached to the ad: Caution, this ad may contribute to unwarranted euphoria and may cause delusional behavior.

My Letter To Eric Cantor

Dear Eric,

I was so glad to get your letter. Your “Dear Fellow Conservative” salutation was a bit surprising but I guess you meant it as a compliment. I really appreciate you calling on me for help with the terrible troubles you face. As you point out in your letter, you need to stop the liberal lies of the left-wing media; you need to push your conservative agenda of lower taxes, eliminating wasteful spending and more freedom; you need to prepare for an epic battle against the liberal Democrats. As we say in Yiddish, Eric you have real tsuris. It’s no wonder you ask me to send you $1,000.

Eric, I feel for you. It is terrible that the liberal media is filled with such liars as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Glen Beck. They are constantly distorting your record. And even your home-town newspaper, that bastion of Left-wing thinking, the Richmond Times-Dispatch is always opposing everything you do or say. It’s about time we showed them the door.

And your conservative agenda of lower taxes, eliminating waste and more freedom, are things that every Right-thinking American would support. They may call it “Voodoo Economics,” Eric, but you and I know that the only way to reduce our national debt is to cut taxes more severely. We have proven in the Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations that cutting taxes actually increases revenue to the Government. (Or we would have proven it if only those leftist Democrats had let the experiment run longer.) So, we’ve got to cut taxes more or else we will never balance the budget.

You are so right! Everybody knows that most government spending is wasteful. And it’s also socialist. Just look at these programs—public broadcasting, public transportation, public this and public that. If they were good capitalist programs, would they call them public? I am so glad that this week you Right-thinking conservatives cut funding for public radio and public TV. That stuff is not only a waste of taxpayer money, but it’s downright subversive. Eric, did you ever watch that Sesame thing? They’ve got all these puppets of different colors and with different accents living happily and singing about numbers and letters. Is this the kind of thing we want our children to learn? They even have this big yellow bird! Give me a break. Eric, thank you for cutting that nonsense.

Now, I know that those lying liberals will accuse you of voting for a lot of wasteful spending during those years when W was president. They will say that you voted year after year for budgets that added trillions of dollars to our national debt. But they just don’t understand. Sometimes in Washington you have to vote for things you disagree with. I know that you strongly oppose deficit spending and would never have voted for those things if you had a choice. But, you had more important things on your mind than the welfare of your constituents. After all, would you be Majority Leader now if you had voted against your Republican president during those eight years?

Your third goal—more freedom—who could oppose it? We all know that our freedoms are constantly under attack by Washington. They are always trying to regulate us. They expect us to provide safe workplaces, even to miners; they expect us to clean up our factories and farms so we don’t pollute the air or water; they expect us to tolerate labor unions. And these are just the tip of the iceberg. We need to get rid of all those Washington regulations. How can a company make a decent profit unless we get free from these meddling bureaucrats in Washington?*

Finally, Eric, there is your epic battle against the liberal Democrats next year. This one will truly be Armageddon. You say that we need to take down Obama and Pelosi, but isn’t it liberal thinking that we must really oppose? We need to fight to the finish against such liberal concepts as feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, caring for the sick, clothing the naked, protecting the powerless in our society, helping the poor or welcoming the stranger. We need to crush out the outrageous liberal ideas that we are responsible for each other or that we are responsible for leaving this world to our children and grandchildren in as good a shape as we received it from the generations that preceded us. We need to stamp out the idea that government has any valid purpose other than protecting our right to make as much money as possible.

Now, comes the bad news, Eric. You asked that I contribute as much as $1,000 to support your campaign to save America. Unfortunately, because of the state of the economy, my wife and I have really had to cut our wasteful spending. (You should be happy that we are following your example.) So, I am sorry to say that we cannot give you any money now.

In any event, Eric, thanks for the letter.


*Eric, you have to be careful with that phrase “more freedom.” You certainly wouldn’t want people to think you supported the freedom to marry who you want or the freedom of women to control their own bodies!

Eric Cantor: The Arrogance Of Power

Perhaps it’s because he rose to the top so quickly. Eric Cantor was elected to the House of Representatives in 2000. After only one term, he was appointed Chief Deputy Republican Whip. This made him a major Washington insider while still in his thirties.

Or, it might be the fact that the Seventh District of Virginia was designed as a safe district for Republicans. Eric has been reelected four times, never getting less than 63% of the vote cast. The district has been represented in the Congress by Republicans since 1971. In the last three presidential elections, the district has voted Republican.

Or, maybe it’s because Representative Cantor has led a charmed life in Washington. Although he was closely connected with the corruption of Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay, Mr. Cantor came away unscathed. See The New Teflon Kid.

I guess it’s not surprising that Eric Cantor radiates an aura of arrogance. He is the golden boy. He is destined to rise to higher positions of power in Washington. And Eric Cantor is not going to let a little thing like an election get in his way. Eric isn’t really running to keep his Seventh District seat. He is running for House Majority Leader. And that election is decided by his fellow Republicans in Washington, not by the voters of the Seventh District.

When the Congress adjourns so that members can return to their districts to campaign, Eric Cantor stays in Washington. He has no need to campaign. Although other incumbent representatives participate in debates so that their constituents can make intelligent decisions on election day, Eric Cantor refuses to debate. As he puts it, he is much too busy in Washington working on creating jobs. He can’t be expected to take time out to debate. After all, it’s not like he can lose.

Of course, when Eric is through creating jobs he does come back to the district. But still, he will not debate. In fact, he is not in the district to campaign, but for a victory tour. Every other candidate (and athlete) waits until the race is over before taking a victory lap. Not Eric. He is so sure that his reelection is a sure thing that he is celebrating in advance.

I don’t want you to think that Eric Cantor doesn’t like to talk to his constituents. That’s not true. He will gladly talk with any constituent so long as he or she is committed to his reelection. Those constituents are bound to further inflate his ego. But he doesn’t want to see or hear from those who oppose him. First of all because anything they might say is obviously wrong. Second because he doesn’t want any of the real voters in Washington to think that he is anything but the most beloved favorite son of the Seventh District.

One other thing—because he is a golden boy and his constituents are mere mortals, Eric Cantor doesn’t expect anyone will notice if he says a few things that are not quite true in his reelection campaign. For example, Eric has the chutzpah to be running against Washington. Here’s a guy who has been a Washington insider for at least the last eight years and he thinks we won’t notice if he portrays himself as an outside reformer. Eric also portrays himself as a fiscal conservative. When exactly did this transformation take place? When he lusted for advancement in the party and therefore voted consistently with the Bush Administration, Eric Cantor voted to cut taxes and to significantly increase federal spending. During the years when George W. Bush was president, Eric Cantor voted to increase our federal debt by an outrageous four trillion dollars. See Eric Canter a Fiscal Conservative?—No Way

But, Eric Cantor is sure that no one will notice the inconsistencies. He is sure he will not only be reelected by his compliant constituency in the Seventh District but also that he will be elected House Majority leader in January. And if that happens, trusted reader, his arrogance will know no bounds. Is there something beyond intolerable?

Cantor Raised How Much?

Reading my Times-Dispatch on Saturday, I was drawn to the lead story in the Metro section, “Cantor to keep donated money.” The gist of the story was that Seventh District Representative Eric Cantor was not going to return $2,300 in campaign contributions he received from Robert I. Toussie. If you remember, Toussie’s son was pardoned by President Bush last week and then his pardon was revoked when Bush learned that Toussie senior was a major contributor to the Republican Party. I don’t care too much about the Toussie issue. If Toussie merited a pardon before the disclosure of his father’s largess, I would assume he still merited one after the disclosure.

What did open my eyes was this statement in the story: “Cantor’s campaign raised $4.5 million this election cycle.” Did I read that right? Four point five million dollars? Why would an incumbent running for re-election in a safe Republican district need to raise $4.5 million dollars in campaign contributions? Considering that he was running against a political unknown, I am sure that Mr. Cantor could have easily been re-elected without spending a cent on his campaign.

Reader, you know that since I am a Democrat and mostly a liberal I am not a great fan of Eric Cantor. I’ve never met the guy, but I just don’t like his politics. As I have expressed here, and in a letter to the TD back in 2006, I think that Cantor is a big part of the cause for the problems that we face in this country after eight years of Republican governance. But that is not what this is about. What this is about is the outrageous campaign finance laws that permit members of Congress to raise obscenely large amounts of money and use them for just about any purpose they care to.

The federal campaign finance laws are administered by the Federal Election Commission. In the regulations the Commission has issued to implement the laws there is a Part 113 entitled “Use of Campaign Accounts for Non-Campaign Purposes.” I would have hoped that these regulations would put severe limits on what campaign funds can be used for. Instead, they seem to legitimize every use of the funds other than the member of Congress putting it directly into his pocket or her purse.

So what kind of things does our Mr. Cantor spend campaign funds on? First, he spends on salaries and benefits for a staff. (These are all based on financial statements filed with the Federal Election Commission by “Cantor For Congress.”) From the financial statements we cannot tell whether these expenses were for a separate campaign staff or to augment federal funding for Mr. Cantor’s Washington or Seventh District staffs. (Please keep in mind, dear reader, that I am not suggesting that Mr. Cantor is doing anything illegal. He spent a significant amount of his campaign funds for legal consulting, so I must assume he got good advice.)

Mr. Cantor spent big bucks on airline fares, hotel rooms, car rentals and other expenses of travel in many places around the country. I cannot tell whether these trips were related to his re-election campaign or his campaign to become Minority Whip. Mr. Cantor also spent a significant amount on catering for various events. Again, many of these were neither within the congressional district nor in Washington so it is hard to tell how they related to the campaign.

Mr. Cantor’s campaign spent a lot on fundraising consultants. Payments to G.R. Seppala and Associates, in Wayzata, Minnesota, for fundraising consulting amounted to over $85,000 during the campaign. (This amounts to more than Mr. Cantor’s opponent spent on the whole campaign.) To me this suggests that Cantor for Congress is more a money producing entity than an election campaign committee. When you pay that kind of money to one consultant, you are obviously expecting a rather big return on your investment (like maybe $4.5 million).

Mr. Cantor also spent a big chunk of his campaign funds on what I call “win friends and influence people” expenditures. He contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the election campaigns of other Republicans around the country. These are the kinds of contributions you surely want to be making if you’re running for Minority Whip. He sent money to the National Republican Congressional Campaign, the Nevada Republican Party and local campaign committees. One of the larger contributions was $5000 to the John Doolittle Legal Defense Fund. (Mr. Doolittle, one of Mr. Cantor’s former fellow Republicans in the House, is charged with corruption and is in need of lots of money for his defense.)

So, trusted reader, what are we to make of this? We have a campaign finance system that allows representatives and senators to raise huge amounts of money and use it for purposes not directly related to their re-election campaigns. Is this the way we should be electing our public officials? We need the Congress to go back and look at the campaign finance laws again and impose restrictions on themselves. Write to you senators and representative and urge them to fix a system that seems out of control.

Eric Canter a Fiscal Conservative?—No Way

Well, the letter in this morning’s TD entitled “Cantor Speaks Truth to Big Spenders,” does not merit the Maven’s most wonderful letter of the day award. But I do need to respond to it. The writer discusses the philosophical differences between representatives Eric Cantor and Jim Moran “and their parties.” The writer concludes that Mr. Cantor and the Republicans want to reduce spending and taxes while Mr. Moran and the Democrats want to increase both.

Unfortunately, our author only looks to Mr. Cantor’s rhetoric and not to his actions. We need to look at some facts.

Mr. Cantor and George W. Bush, the leader of his party, were elected on the same Election Day. They both entered into federal service during the same January 2001. At that time our Federal Government carried a debt of $5,727,776,738,304.64 or about 5.7 trillion dollars. That sure was a lot of debt. But wait, as of today the debt of our Federal Government is (drum roll) $9,341,527,250,070.24 or about 9.3 trillion dollars. My calculator tells me that this amounts to an increase of about 3.6 trillion dollars. So Mr. Cantor and Mr. Bush, during their brief seven plus year sojourn in Washington have increased the amount of money that every man, woman and child in the United States owes by about 63%.

Wait, our author might say. Maven, you’re being unfair blaming this on Mr. Cantor. Everybody knows that it is the Democrats that like to spend, spend, spend, and that it’s the Republicans that want to cut taxes.

Eric Cantor cannot deny that he has been one of President Bush’s most loyal followers in the House of Representatives. He did not get to the top of the heap in the Republican leadership by being a maverick. He has consistently voted for Mr. Bush’s tax cuts and for thirteen annual appropriations acts every year since he has been in Congress. I know of no instance during the six years when he was in the majority when Mr. Cantor complained of pork barrel spending by his own party. It is only when the electorate made the congressional Republicans into the minority party that Mr. Cantor suddenly became concerned by wasteful spending. And, as for cutting taxes, as I pointed out on this blog nearly two years ago,

The Republicans claim they are fiscally responsible. They claim they have lowered taxes. Come on RNC. Are the actions of Mr. Bush and his Republican congressional cohorts really resulting in lower taxes? Hell no! They have merely moved the tax burden from themselves to a future generation. Eventually some one has to pay off that debt. Their spend now-pay later philosophy is the farthest thing from fiscal responsibility I can think of. 1

Every year that Eric Cantor has been in Congress he has raised taxes on our children and grandchildren by spending more money than we have. It is quite that simple. If our author thinks that makes Mr. Cantor a fiscal conservative, he needs to think again.

What’s In A Name?

I must bestow a Chutzpa Award on our very own Congressperson, Eric Cantor. Mr. Cantor has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would cut corporate tax rates from 35% to 25%. Mr. Cantor has the chutzpa to call this gift to corporate America “The Middle Class Job Protection Act.”

The New Teflon Kid

What do these three names have in common? Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, Eric Cantor. They were all involved in raising millions of dollars for Republican members of Congress.

What do these three names not have in common? Jack Abramoff is going to jail. Tom Delay was forced to resign from the House of Representatives. Eric Cantor has been reelected to his fourth term in the House.

It makes you wonder what 64% of the voters in the 7th District of Virginia were thinking. Were they even thinking? Money and politics are so mixed in the electorate’s mind that they don’t seem to care any more.

It’s kind of strange. The polls indicate that the Congress is the only institution in the United States with a lower approval rating than President George. Yet, even in this “historic” election, more than 80% of the House incumbents running for reelection won. It seems that the voters believe that everyone in Congress is worthless except for their own Representative.

So the new Teflon kid has dodged the K Street lobbying scandal, at least for now. We are stuck with him for another two years. Of course there is always the consolation that Eric won’t be Assistant Majority Whip in the next Congress.