Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

I recently received two emails that started me thinking about how our federal government works. One was a modified version of an old Orlando Sentinel article by Charley Reese about how 545 people are responsible for the whole federal government. The other email was a short video of Glenn Beck on Fox News highlighting how many new agencies have been formed because of “Obama’s Health Care Bill”.

I encourage you to read Reese’s article, the point of which is

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices – 545 human beings out of the 235 million – are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

Our system of government is based on an underlying assumption of a well-informed electorate. But a recent poll by Newsweek indicates a significant percentage of Americans aren’t knowledgeable about our government and how it works. This makes it easy, especially among the Fox News crowd, to blame the President for the ills of the country. As opposed to what Glenn Beck and many of the neo-conservatives would like you to believe, Congress, not the President, is the responsible party. As the Orlando Sentinel summarized here:

Partisans on both sides like to blame presidents for deficits, but all deficits are congressional deficits. The president may, by custom, recommend a budget, but it carries no legal weight. Only Congress is authorized by the Constitution to authorize and appropriate and to levy taxes. That’s what the federal budget consists of: expenditures authorized, funds appropriated and taxes levied.

 Is the President blameless? Of course not. He sets the tone and can sway the discussion. But make no mistake, Congress bears the ultimate responsibility for the current mess. From the failed policies during the Republican majority of the late ‘90s and early 2000s through the Democratic years, Congress has systematically pandered to fringe groups and large financial donors.

It is time to hold these 545 people accountable.