To the returning and incoming members of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate:

On January 3rd, our nation’s 110th Congress opened its first session, following an election in which America’s voters gave control of both bodies composing that institution to the Democratic Party for the first time in 12 years. Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that the “first 100 hours” of Congressional work time will be spent righting wrongs and pointing American government in a new direction. Change is in the air — but what kind of change?

I’d like to think that America’s voice has reached the ear of Republican and Democrat alike.

I’d like to believe that all of you will take America’s clear and pointed rejection of the last six years of federal governance — the gross abuse of executive power, the indefensible suppressions of our rightful liberties, the failed policy of bloody and ineffectual foreign military adventurism, the gross fiscal incompetence and imposition of massive debt on future generations, the rampant corruption — to heart, and that you’ll act decisively to turn our government around and point it toward the future.

I’d like to trust you to do those things … but to do so would be to allow hope to triumph over experience. Even as the vortex of political power that is Washington, DC begins to spin up for another cycle, pulling the country’s attention back toward it yet again, what I hear from the center of power is, to say the least, disturbing.

Instead of “repeal rights-violating legislation and investigate executive abuse of power,” I hear “compromise, and wait for the courts to sort things out.”

Instead of “withdrawal,” I hear “surge.”

Instead of “balanced budget,” I hear “reduce the growth of the debt.”

Instead of “punish the corrupt,” I hear “make new rules which the corrupt can ignore with impunity.”

You’re barely in session … and already you’re backtracking, hemming and hawing, looking for loopholes and escape clauses which will let you avoid doing what you were sent to Washington to do. And that, ladies and gentlemen, just isn’t going to work. It’s going to cost you in 2008 — and until then, it’s going to cost your countrymen, and cost them dearly.

I’m not writing this message to you because I want to live in the White House. I’m writing this message to you because nothing would thrill me more than for you to spend the next two years making my presidential candidacy, and my party, unnecessary.

Nothing would thrill me, or America, more than for this Congress to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act, and bring to justice those in the executive branch who have gone beyond the pale of even those unconstitutional, anti-American and evil pieces of legislation.

Nothing would stand you in better stead than to announce that one way or another — by order of the Commander in Chief or through Congress’s power to deny him the purse — America’s men and women in uniform are coming home from the Middle East and Central Asia, and that they’re doing so NOW.

Nothing would do more for America’s economy than for your next budget, and the one after that, to come in not just in balance, but below projected revenues, with the balance to be split between debt service and a real tax cut.

These three things would not bring back into existence the libertarian America that our nation’s founders bequeathed us and that we’ve spent more than two centuries dismantling, but they would be a good start … and they’d create the momentum for further movement in the right direction.

I’ve often noticed that when politicians talk about starting a war, creating a new entitlement program, or undertaking any other activity that’s bound to get Americans killed, empty their wallets or reduce their freedom, the desire to do so is expressed in terms of “political will,” as if these things were matters of courage and moral rectitude rather than of power-seeking and tawdry dealmaking. Conversely, when politicians cringe from peace, when they cower before the prospect of letting go of other people’s money, when they flee from freedom, they characterize their approach as “moderation” or “bipartisanship” or “statesmanship.”

These characterizations are 180 degrees out of phase with reality. The real sign of courage is resistance to the special interests and special pleadings that take a country to unnecessary war or plunder the treasury. Real moral rectitude subsists in securing, not violating, the rights of your constituents.

It is not more “political will” that this Congress requires. Rather, what is needed is more “political won’t.”

We need a Congress that won’t continue to fund a failed war of aggression.

We need a Congress that won’t let a power-crazed executive off his leash to spy, imprison and even kill at his defective discretion, or ratify those activities with supporting legislation, or allow him to change the meaning of legislation with “signing statements” that indicate he’ll do what he pleases, the will of Congress — and of the people — be damned.

We need a Congress that won’t spend more money than it takes in — or take in as much money as it’s been taking.

We’ll get that Congress, sooner or later. The only real question is whether or not you will be that Congress, or whether you as individuals will even be in it.

Go ahead. Make my day. Prove to America that you can do the right thing. Because, frankly, I can think of things I’d much rather do than move to Washington and clean up your mess.

Let freedom grow!
Steve Kubby
Libertarian for President

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Steve Kubby is a candidate for the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. His campaign web site is located at www.kubby2008.com. As a matter of course, Rational Review will publish, unedited, the submissions of libertarian presidential candidates. For more information, or for assistance, contact us at info@rationalreview.com.