Vote Buying is Legal?

In the United States if you accepted or offered to pay money or payment in-kind for you or someone else to vote a particular way in an election you would be committing a felony and subject to a $10,000 fine and up to ten years in prison. Most states also have statutes against vote buying in addition to the Federal laws. We all must live by these laws to keep our elections fair and democratic; all of us except the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Senate is working on their version of the Health Care Reform Bill written by Harry Reid (D) AZ in conjunction with the White House. In order to pass this bill Sen. Reid needs 60 votes, especially all 58 of the chamber’s democrats. The one hitch in Mr. Reid’s get-up was Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) LA who was opposed to the bill. Without her vote Sen. Reid has no chance of passing the bill.

One thing to keep in mind is our elected Senators and Representatives are charged with voting the will of the people that elect them. This is a fact that everyone, including the voters, and especially the elected representatives have lost sight of. Elected “officials” work for the people and are “of the people by the people”. The Senator and/or Representative should gather the facts and present those facts to their constituents, and vote the will of the people no matter what their individual or personal opinion on an issue is. In the case of Ms. Landrieu it appeared she was doing just that, since most voters oppose both the House and Senate versions of the Health Care Bill that are currently on the table. Mr. Reid, realizing that Ms. Landrieu wasn’t going to support his bill has put forth a blatant effort to buy Ms. Landrieu’s vote. Mr. Reid added page 432 to the bill, or SEC. 2006. SPECIAL ADJUSTMENT TO FMAP DETERMINATION FOR CERTAIN STATES RECOVERING FROM A MAJOR DISASTER. Without going into detail of the convoluted verbiage of this section it provides for $100,000,000 (that’s one hundred million dollars) in Medicaid subsidies to states “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”  It is further narrowed by including “In this subsection, the term ‘disaster-recovery FMAP adjustment State’ means a State that is one of the 50 States or the District of Columbia, for which, at any time during the preceding 7 fiscal years, the President has declared a major disaster under section 401 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act and determined as a result of such disaster that every county or parish in the State warrant individual and public assistance or public assistance from the Federal Government under such Act”. This makes this section apply to one state; Louisiana. The bottom line is Mr. Reid has put one hundred million of yours and my federal tax dollars on the table in an offer to buy Ms. Landrieu’s vote on his Bill.

In my opinion, since Louisiana has 638,943 registered voters Mr. Reid should be charged with that many counts of vote buying. If charged and convicted he would be subject to $6,389,430,000 in fines and 6,389,430 years in prison. Since Mr. Reid put this offer to buy Ms. Landrieu’s vote on the table she is of course reconsidering her position and considering voting in favor of the bill. You can’t blame the people of Louisiana for wanting to procure an extra one hundred million dollars in funding for any program, especially in an economic time when States are struggling to meet budget requirements. You also can’t blame Ms. Landrieu personally for reconsidering her vote since she is charged with voting the will of the people of her state. Who you can blame is Mr. Reid and his audacious offer to buy-off the State of Louisiana. Vote buying—the exchange of money or goods for a voter’s support—is viewed as reprehensible and corrupt. Thusly I would consider Mr. Reid “reprehensible and especially corrupt” since he is not even using his own money to buy this vote but yours and my federal tax dollars.

The degenerates we have in Congress presently play with our money and our lives like they are playing a game of Monopoly. The above example is only one of vote buying and arm-twisting that continues on a daily basis in Congress. It is time we clean house and start fresh. Congressmen and Senators are like boils on the ass. When they are fresh and new they are manageable and can be cured but once they have been there for a while they get engrained and just end up being a pain in one’s ass. Even if you find a good man or woman for the job once they have had to deal with the likes of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi they are doomed to fall into the same trap just to survive.