When Do Members of Congress Become Experts?

Have you noticed how members of Congress treat each other as if they are experts on various topics?

Once you've elected someone from your Congressional District to the House, or from your state to the Senate, they draw assignments on committees. Give them a few years, and suddenly they act like they actually know more about the area, or how it should be operated, than anyone else.

Doddering Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who took bribes from Countrywide Finance while chair of the Senate committee overseeing housing finance, tosses off numbers and comments as if he actually knows how housing finance works. And what is best for the country.

Trouble is, over the objections and efforts of the Bush administration to rein in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank collaborated to let the two GSE's load up on questionable mortgages and issue securities backed by them.

Who died and left California Congressman Henry Waxman an authority on climate and energy policy?

My point is, these people run against someone else, and win, as ordinary citizens. Then they go the Hill and, a year later, come back changed.

Suddenly you, the voter, are someone to be gamed and conned. They have their Congressional careers to which to tend. They must curry favor for preferred, powerful committee assignments and, eventually, seniority which leads to chairing a committee.

Thus, we are presented with a Democratic healthcare bill crafted by ideologues more focused on gathering power to the federal government than effectively modifying government involvement in healthcare in order to foster more individual choice, lower costs, and affordable options for health insurance for the poor.

Does anyone think that the average Congressional member actually knows how to legislate for a better US healthcare system? I don't.

If that's what was truly desired in Congress, I'd expect a joint House and Senate panel to be spending weeks, if not months, taking testimony from various industry participants, think tanks and academics, in order to hear the greatest number of ideas on what could be done to fix some of the generally-agreed-upon problems with US healthcare.

That's not what we're getting. There are a few exceptions, such as Rony Wyden of Oregon and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. But for the most part, few members of Congress know enough, or are even smart enough to tackle this problem alone.

Then you overlay our First Nitwit's demand that 'something' be done before the Congressional recess in August, and you have mass stupidity.

Just when did any of these morons become 'experts' on anything?