The Recidivist Congress
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on February 2nd, 2009 5:38 am by HL
The Recidivist Congress
WASHINGTON — “Recidivism” is Rep. Jim Cooper’s laconic explanation of why he, although only 54, has spent portions of five decades on Congress’ payroll. Responding with aphorisms (e.g., “Bad government starts at the grass roots”) to the tedium of Congress’ culture of avoidance, he grows more laconic as the welfare state’s implosion approaches. The son of a Tennessee governor, Cooper, a Democrat who represents Nashville, was a congressional page starting in 1969 and then a Rhodes Scholar before being elected to Congress in 1982. Having run unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1994, he returned to the House in 2002. A mordant Cassandra (“If members of Congress were paid on commission to cut spending we’d see fabulous results”), he is no longer astonished by Congress’ bipartisan avoidance of the predictable crisis coming to the big three entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
