Send Congressmen Home For A Year

Don't laugh.

But let's give every congressman a million dollars and send them home for a year while we straighten out the country.

I make this proposal only half in jest.

A million dollars sounds like a lot of money, yet it is something less than the actual cost of keeping a senator or representative in Washington for a year.

When this money creates more problems than it solves, we would be better off without their services.

Forty years of political meddling with prices while borrowing heavily to pay for both guns and butter finally has produced something new under the sun - inflation simultaneous with recession.

It has taken only one year for similar congressional ineptitude to throw U.S. foreign policy into disarray.

Economists tend to blame our present economic situation on a decision by President Lyndon Johnson and his rubber-stamp Congress - to pay for the Vietnam war and Great Society welfare simply by running the paper-money printing presses faster.

Like the cashier who expects to return today's embezzlement with tomorrow's horse race winnings, Congress hoped to avoid the consequences of excessive spending.

Now, in the cold light of reality, we have to balance the books the hard way.

Congress as guardian of the purse strings bears the principal blame for our economic plight.  Unfortunately, our law makers want to cure inflation with inflation.

Congress wouldn't buy President Gerald Ford's first economic cure that called for some government spending offset by a temporary increase in the income tax.  The new crop of congressmen - called "the crazies" by old timers in Capitol Hill - are dragging their feet on Ford's latest proposal also.

Ford now seeks to stimulate the economy with an income tax rebate to be offset by higher taxes on foreign oil.  Freshmen representatives are holding out for gifts without prices tags.

"Are we delaying?"  Rep. William J. Green (D-Pa.) asked rhetorically as Congress adjourned for a three-week holiday.  "Clearly we are, and clearly we intend to."

He said he and his colleagues want to draft an economic package that is "sound" - whatever that means.

Congress wants to give us a "painless" tax rebate - by borrowing it back from us as part of a deficit budget next year when, hopefully, things will be better.

Have we, at last, found the secret of perpetual motion?

The record of Congress in the field of foreign policy is equally dismal.

From the pre-Nixon days of carte blanche to the chief executive, the legislative branch has moved to unconstitutional interference.

It all started last year when Senator Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) succeeded in tying a Jewish emigration clause to the trade agreement with the Soviet Union.  Russia signed the accord hesitantly, and Congress thought it had discovered a new weapon to coerce foreign governments.

Upon reflection, however, the Soviets renounced the agreement, stopped altogether the trickle of Jewish emigration, and refused to carry out its part of the original bargain - to repay a large part of its World War II lend-lease debt to the U.S.

In the same vein, Congress attempted to force Turkey to give captured Cyrus territory back to the Greeks by cutting off U.S. aid.  Last week, as the cut-off deadline passed, Turkey told us what we can do with our NATO bases on Turkish soil and prepared to make the northern half of Cyprus a Turkish province.

South Vietnam was hanging on with a flexible aid program, but then Congress tried to terminate hostilities by putting a flat ceiling of $700 million on this year's assistance.  As the military hardware ran out, the communists toppled a provincial city and threatened the capitals of South Vietnam and Cambodia.  Hostilities finally may end with defeat of Indochina's only pro-western Asians.

No one can quarrel with the intentions of Congress.  But, as my old granny used to say, "The road to perdition is paved with good intentions."

When Senator George Aiken (D-Vt.) retired last month he confessed the "sins" of his political career.  In more than 30 years in the Congress, he said, "I have voted for measures which I felt were wrong, comforting myself with the excuse that the House of Representatives, the conference committee, or, if, necessary, the chief occupant of the White House would make the proper corrections."

Aiken said this approach to politics was a common one among his colleagues.  Undoubtedly true.

But these are perilous times demanding something more than politics as usual.

If log rolling and obstructionism are to prevail we will be better off to give our representatives their $42,500 salary, plus an equal amount of expenses, plus staff costs and supportive services totaling $610,000 to $1.3 million each - depending upon whether you throw in the Library of Congress - and send them home to keep them out of mischief.

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