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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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051589
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1990-09-22
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LETTERS, Page 5Two Hundred Years of Congress
Despite your piece defending the U.S. Congress (ESSAY, April
17), that body is a brainless monster, feasting on its own vanity
and ignorance. Its members remain in office term after term simply
by overfeeding their constituents out of the U.S. Treasury, with
little thought or concern for the country as a whole. That is why
the national debt has become the problem it is, and that is also
why the majority of voters, observing how truly bad Congress is,
continue to send a Republican to the White House.
Teddy A. Byrd Sr.
Merritt Island, Fla.
Americans must beware of insidious attempts to grab power by
the Executive Branch. The line-item veto is the next step to
one-branch control. The alternative to constitutional checks and
balances is a dictatorship. Lack of power sharing may explain why
few democracies have survived even 200 years.
George A. Weber
Mason City, Iowa
Congress is not capable of dealing with the multiplicity of
complex decisions that must be made. The world has dramatically
changed in the past 200 years, and we need an institution that
reflects and responds to that change. I would like to see a system
patterned after the British parliamentary model. The party elected
to the White House should have a chance to set the agenda and carry
it out. If it fails, it is removed.
Carl LaVerghetta
Columbia, Md.
The American voting public is simply expressing its belief that
neither the Executive Branch (President, Republican) nor the
Legislative Branch (Congress, mostly Democratic) is to be trusted
alone. So the voters make their selections and then let them slug
it out. This way of handling the dilemma seems pretty healthy to
me.
Ronald L. Braun
Somerset, N.J.