The 535 vs. all the rest

We are living in a time where too many citizens do not understand how our federal government functions and whose responsibility it is for all the problems we currently face.

These 535 elected officials that we the people voted into office are directly responsible for the problems that our country faces today.

Make no mistake, they and they alone are the people who make the laws and rules the rest of us adhere to. They and they alone have the power to create all the bureaucracies that make us subject to their rules and regulations, not laws, mind you, but rules and regulations enforced by persons hired to do a job.

When "We The People" stop believing in the illusion that the government is here to help and realize that it is only here to promote itself as the savior of us and our way of life, then we can see it as it is: self aggrandizing and a way to control the populace from the cradle to the grave.

The Constitution, as written so long ago, was and is the greatest document ever, but it has been bastardized over time and it has been misused and misunderstood for years. There is always some agenda to undermine its authority or to challenge its meaning.

When people were called to serve as Congressman or Senator, they were given a stipend to live on while they served. Today, it is get rich quick scheme and some are entrenched for years and years, taking advantage of all the perks afforded to them and really doing little or nothing for the citizens they are there to serve.

We do not need all the rules and regulations forced upon us by the federal government! It should be there to protect and defend our sovereign land and protect and defend its citizens from harm.

Everything else should be left to a free market society that would by design, be self monitoring and self governing or bankrupt as the market dictates.

Reducing the size and overreach of the federal government, balancing the budge, reducing federal spending, enact term limits on both the House and Senate, and a return to the original meaning of our Constitution would go a long way toward regaining the trust of those constituents that gave the members the honor to serve “We the People.”

Just the humble opinion of an 80-year-old Patriot.

Jon Dunham

Libby