At the Fourth of July Celebration, I had a conversation with State Representative Tom Graves. Tom is one of the young aggressive members of the Georgia House of Representatives. He has an-nounced that he is running for the U. S. House of Representatives for the 2010 election which is still about 15 months away. We have talked before and expect to talk again several times between now and the election.

The subject of Term Limits came up and I expressed my view that we should limit the terms for the Congress. I believe that Senators should serve no more than two six year terms and that the Representatives should serve no more than five two year terms. I also believe that the retirement benefits should be stopped and that the service of our representatives should be applied to their Social Security benefits just like the rest of the citizens of the United States. Representative Graves did not give any objections to these ideas but he also did not state that he endorsed them. We will discuss this further before the time of the election.

Representative Graves brought up some thoughts about term limits that had not occurred to me. When you attempt to contact your Representative or Senator in Washington, you can get no further than a staff member who is responsible for the area that you are questioning. These staff members are career people who live and work in Washington and make a lifetime job of it. When a new Rep-resentative or Senator is elected he hires his own staff. Usually this starts with an associate that has helped him get elected as Chief of Staff but under this level is likely to be the same career peo-ple that worked for the previous Representative or Senator. They know the key people in the dis-trict and know how to contact the state agencies and important people.

This staff is the group that writes any legislation that is offered by the Representative or Senator. They also are the contacts for the lobbyists that are trying to influence the Representative or Sena-tor. They are the people who are supposed to read the legislation being proposed that the Repre-sentative or Senator is supposed to vote on. They summarize to the Representative or Senator what the legislation is about and make recommendations about how to vote. This is the group that has the biggest influence in Washington according to State Representative Graves. Perhaps there should be some limit on this group. It may not be possible to do this with legislation but each Representative or Senator can be encouraged to bring more of his local constituents to Washington to assist them in their offices.

My own thought is that we know that today’s voting is not controlled by what is in a bill but it is based on the party line that is determined by the Speaker of the House or the Senate Majority Leader. If you want good committee assignments and you wish to get your own pork amendments passed you will vote as you are told to vote. A new Representative or Senator takes office and thinks that he is important and can influence what goes on in Washington but he soon learns that until he reaches a real position of power where he can control a block of votes he is just a pawn of his political party.

I am favorably impressed with Tom Graves and I believe that he can be elected to the House of Representatives. As the election gets closer, I will have more conversations with him and will re-port his views to you along with the views of any opposition that may decide to run for the position.