American Politics Mid-term

1. How well does Congress represent American people and its interests?

Ever since the establishment of Congress which originated in the conflict between big state (Virginia) and small state (New Jersey), the representation system in Congress has been well emphasized in almost all kinds of legislative activities. House of representative with its distribution of seats proportional to the population of states and Senate with its equal distribution of seats among fifty states, with no doubts, laid the foundation for each member of both House and Congress directly responsible for his or her states, and constituents. The most important factor which guaranteed such representation between Congress members and their constituency is the way of election. The election system of Congress member, which articulated clearly in Constitution’s main article and Amendment XVII, is doomed to give Congress members a duty—reflecting constituency’ voice, besides the duty of legislation.

With the specific clause in Constitution, Congress member indeed can be praise as the most fundamental path for people to express their opinions (practical speaking, if they don’t do so, their reelection would be jeopardized). Congress members always leave Washington D.C. and go to the states they represented to hear the voice from general people. They usually spend a great mount of their time dealing with the calling, letters and E-mail from their constituency, which express opinions contain both disagreement and acknowledgement. Also, Congress member hold the unofficial responsibility to recommend people, to inquire the permission for people to tour some very important building, etc. More important, Congress member try their best to get federal budget for their hometown, which always as a mean of pork barrel.

However, the criticism of the futility for Congress member to really represent American people never stops. Firstly, even though the election of Congress member is public and direct for people to participate, the money for a citizen to be elected as Senator or Congressman is still astonishing. With this financial obstacle, not only can ordinary people easily reach the seats in Congress, but also it is difficult for those “elite” Congress members really understand people’s problems and concerns. Secondly, even though the seats of both House and Senate has been diversified a lot, the demographics of Congress is still far from being equally distributed among all kinds of people with different religion affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, occupation, and education level. For example, African-Americans which constitute 13% of America population, only have around 43 (I don’t quiet remember the exact number) seats of House.

2. Why is the federal budget so often in deficit, and how is this subject so controversial?

Deficit measures the difference between revenue and spending. In order to understand the reasons lead to the stunning deficit, we should explore from two perspectives—why revenue decreases and why spending increases.

From revenue perspective, heavy deficit always occurs during the time of economic crisis, which has been the primary reason lead the increase of unemployment rate, decrease of people’s income and decrease of consumption, thus make the revenue, which constitutes largely by tax, shrink. Politicians’ role in economy, especially during of the time of heavy deficit, is also of great consequence. In order to win election, they would rather to maintain a relatively low tax rate, so that the revenue can hardly stop decreasing.

However, the astonishing spending, compared with decrease in revenue, definetly plays a more important part in the situation of deficit. With the background of national economic crisis, government has to stimulate the derelict economy by allowing the passage of huge stimulus package, which made up of both spending and tax cut, and dramatically made the already heavy deficit more incredible. Also, expenditures such as social security and Medicare & Medicaid’s proportion in Federal budget are growing faster and faster; the recent reform of health-care system carried out by President Obama, if pass by Congress, with no doubt will bring more deficit to the national economy. Another factor which played an indispensible role in such situation is the increase in U.S defense budget. This budget, which excludes both the expenditure in Iraq, Afghanistan and homeland security, in the past few years, has always been increasing.

Deficit has always been so controversial for it direct links to a country’s economical dependence (National debt has been the primary solution to conciliate deficit); also it is a measurement of economic prosperity. Clinton administration has been praised for eliminating deficit but Bush administration has been criticized for leading American into rapidly growing deficit. The problem of deficit is so important but sometimes distressing—people want to get rid of deficit but so many difficulties and obstacles stop them from quickly and neatly finishing this mission.

3. How do the politics of health care illustrate broad themes in American politics? (As part of your response, be sure to refer explicitly to constitutional provisions, as discussed in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere.)

Health-care has never been a new problem. Ever since President Truman proposed the idea of establishing a health-care system which gives everyone coverage, the endeavors of turning dream into reality never stops. However, the efforts paid by many administrations to fulfill such blueprint, such as JFK, Lyndon Johnson and Clinton administration, were nothing but a cry before total failure. And then American people have Obama, a president who swear to change the current situation; health-care reform, this controversial subject, again became the center of focus. How does health-care embody the basis of American politics, and how can it be viewed as an illustration of American people’s deep-buried ideology?

Firstly, the legislative process of establishment health-care system clearly shows us the idea of Check and Balance. Explicitly illustrated in Constitution article one two and three, president, Congress as well as Supreme Court act respectively as executive branch, legislative branch and judicial branch; and each branch plays the role of surveillance and checks towards other two branches. In this specific case—health-care, it mainly presents the interaction between Congress and the president. Without the consent from Congress (the agreement from half seats in both Senate and House of Representative), Obama can never let his dream come true, despite his ambitious speech and confident promises. The people in Capital Hill also have their own concern. Although the majority party shares the same party affiliation with president, Congress members still need to reconsider their votes, for an unwelcome vote could lead the dissatisfaction from their constituency, thus make them lost reelection.

Secondly and also the most importantly, health-care reform shows the ideology of “small government, big society”, which buried deeply in American people’s mind. Ever since escaped from the domination and control by British aristocrats more than four hundred years ago, the funding fathers of this new nation had tried their best to maintain people’s rights being inviolable. From Federalist Paper to Bill of Rights, such concern has been time after time emphasized; and inside such concern, the appropriate relation between government and general people has attracted the most accurate and fierce argument. “An over-powerful government can be even more hazardous then a tiger”, which articulated in the Mickey Edwards’s book Reclaim Conservatism, can perfectly illustrate American people’s fear and qualm towards ‘big government’: people do not like the excessive intervention of government in private issues. Once Obama’s new health-care system is established, not only will intervention of government be more comprehensive, but also the private insurance suppliers will be kicked out because their adversary is U.S. government.