MAKE CONGRESS VOTE AT HOME AND RID AMERICA OF LOBBYISTS INFLUENCE

Jim Rogers: Make Congress Vote in Front of Constituents

Monday, 11 Jul 2011 12:44 PM

By Julie Crawshaw

International investor Jim Rogers says Congressional representatives should work in their home districts and vote in front of their constituents instead of going to Washington to work.

"If Congressman voted in front of us, would they have used tax money to bail out the banks?" Rogers said during an interview with the San Francisco Examiner about Gov At Home, a non-profit organization Rogers is working to publicize.

"Why do we send everyone to Washington?" asks Rogers. "That was certainly the way to do things in 1789 when America was established" and there were no phones or Internet.

Jim Rogers (Getty Images photo)

However, if the U.S. were just starting now, representatives would use video conferencing and Internet.

"Now you can do anything you want," says Rogers. "You can have meetings, write documents together.”

“What we're doing now is a terrible waste of time, energy and money," he says, adding that Republican and Democratic party leadership would likely also have diminished influence on local representatives.

Keeping government reps at home would allow voters to monitor officials than what's possible from hundreds or thousands of miles away and significantly weaken the influence of lobbyists.

"If lobbyists in this country had to go to 535 districts, our laws would be quite different," Rogers notes.

Saint Louis Today reports that, as President Barack Obama and congressional leaders look for savings as part of a major debt deal, the pharmaceutical industry has stepped up its behind-the-scenes lobbying to kill proposals that include discounted drug prices.

Read more: Jim Rogers: Make Congress Vote in Front of Constituents
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