Pros And Cons Of Drain The Swamp

First Class: We talked in our first Class about President Trump’s plan to “Drain the Swamp.” The problem in Trump’s eyes is that career politicians are poisoning the system and the revolving door of politicians going to work for cooperations and lobbyists is bringing corruption. Trump continues to say that “things are bad in DC” however, their might be something bad with his terminology. “Drain the Swamp” is an open ended term—one that any American could project their goals onto, similar to the slogan “make America great again.” Trump has a package of ethics reforms he would enforce as president. First, a 5 year ban on government officials going to lobby after they leave office. Second, a 5 year ban on congressmen and their staffs on lobbying …show more content…
1995), went straight to the point about whether the government responds to its citizens: some? The mission of Taxpayers for common sense is to create a government that operates within its means. They do this by reading bills and helping reporters interpret proposed legislation. Some of the non beneficial structuring of the congress Mrs. Alexander talked about were the small states being able to have such powerful senators, and “safe” representatives who don’t listen to the voters. Taxpayers advocates for re-districting to stop jerry-mandering and encourages citizens to be informed and vote. Alexander mentioned some positive moves of limiting government spending and their responsiveness to the citizen: ending earmarking—not merit based spending that congress members could put into the budget. A notable earmark she mentioned was the “bridge to nowhere”. An Alaskan senator earmarked and absurd amount of money for a bridge that would affect 50 of his constituents in Alaska, and then refused to give up the money during a time of need in the nation, I believe hurricane Katrina (I cannot read my writing!). She then opened up the talk to questions. When we asked about good appropriations that may have been cut with the ban of earmarking—she mentioned that if the matter was important enough congressmen could still get money for it, but they couldn’t use them as political leverage. She mentioned that Taxpayers could not …show more content…
She first talked about the politics of defense spending—which plays a lot into how it works for the people. 600 billion dollars goes into US defense spending. Much of the problem lies in the military contacts—their argument is that if even 50 million dollars was cut countless jobs would be lost. Roxana explained to us though that sometimes these contracts are with companies or for products that are wasteful. Tiron also explained how difficult it is to turn down a project that is in the name of national security. There is very little accountability in defense spending, which leads most to believe that companies are benefitting more from defense spending than citizens. Tiron brought up the revolving door of defense staff that go to work for defense companies or in lobbying once they are finished with their government work. They have to wait two years for ethical reasons before going to these places, but Tiron mentioned the connections they have once they start working allow them to make deals easier. Congress sometimes can order the pentagon to spend money on a project they want to see—such as the predator drones. Often however, defense companies spread their factories amongst different districts to keep many congressmen from voting down defense spending in order to keep their constituents happy. Tiron lightens that statement by saying that most defense companies are