Angered by the recent check-bouncing scandal in the House of Representatives and the unctuous posturing in the Senate during the Clarence Thomas hearings, the public seems to be getting increasingly critical of Congress.
Could it be that this nation's lawmakers are finally starting to get the message? Namely, they had better reform - or else!There's room for hoping so in view of a new move being spearheaded by Reps. Lee Hamilton and Bill Gradison plus Sens. David Boren and Pete Domenici, who have introduced resolutions calling for a study of potential structural reforms of Congress.
If this study is to be more than just a sop to public opinion, it shouldn't take long to discover the main flaws that need to be fixed on Capitol Hill.
For openers, there's the long list of laws from which Congress exempts itself while imposing them on the rest of the country. Among such laws are those on sexual discrimination, civil rights, the minimum wage, Social Security, safety in the work place, age discrimination, equal pay, privacy and the Freedom of Information Act. This double standard simply must go.
Then there are the many other benefits that Congress confers upon its members at the taxpayers' expense. Among these are subsidized meals, massages, haircuts, transportation and junkets that often are free vacations rather than legitimate fact-finding exercises.
Another indication of self-indulgence is the fact that over the past 30 years, Congress increased its own budget more than three times faster than the rate of inflation.
Still another target of reform should be the empire-building in which Congress keeps indulging.
For example, since 1947 the number of staffers employed by Congress has grown from 2,000 to 12,000. To keep those staffers busy, Congress has created more than 300 committees and subcommittees compared to the 38 Congress got by with in 1947.
Meanwhile, to justify its existence, this proliferating congressional bureaucracy keeps producing more paperwork than the average lawmaker can possibly keep up with. Last year, almost 7,000 bills were introduced in Congress and the average length of each bill was five times longer than in 1970.
Over the years, this nation's lawmakers have turned themselves into a special class whose members enjoy far bigger incomes and far more privileges than the constituents they are supposed to serve. If the new effort at congressional reform is to be more than skin deep, this trend must be halted and reversed.