Letter to Speaker Pelosi - a call for action.

Following is a letter that I just sent to Speaker Pelosi.  I could not go another day without having my voice heard.  I encourage all of you to make your voice heard.  I do not expect everyone to agree with all that I have stated in the letter and that is OK.  I do ask that you respect others opinions.

March 27, 2010

Honorable Speaker,

I am concerned with the direction that our nation is headed, and the recent developments around the health care legislation is most disturbing.  I can appreciate the fact that the bill was passed by a major of the congress, but now that it is time to work on reconciling the law I feel that we, the American people, desire to have full access to the discussions on the matter. I believe in the past you have referred to this as being open.

It is my understanding that CSPAN has made a request to cover these discussions and that it has not as yet been granted permission to do so.  As Speaker of the House you have the ability to influence others to make this happen.  Choosing to not have these materials discussed in public would be doing yourself and your party a great dis-service. 

I hope I am only one of many that will reminder everyone in Congress that you represent the people of this nation and we are not happy with your actions.  Be open, get the discussion in to the hands of the people and remember because we elect our representation in government each of you can be replaced.

On another note. Even though we elect congress to office, we do not feel that is license to give yourselves a pay increase. We, the people of this nation, are struggling and you are one of the few groups I know that can grant themselves a raise.  The rest of us get raises based on performance of our job function as determined by those we work for and the overall performance of the organizations for which we work.

Our nation has become very reluctant to get involved in the governance process because they feel that they have little or no influence of what happens in Washington. We need to get the people of this nation engaged. I feel that you should be as vigorous about introducing legislation to limit terms, and have elected official compensation determined by job performance, as you were to reform health care.  Congress's pay increases and compensation packages has create elitist with special privileges and compensation packages.

The majority of this nation's people must work for a living and most of them cannot grant themselves a pay raise.  Rather they are granted a raise by those for whom they work based on performance of their job function.  Why not do the same for our elected officials?  It would be refreshing to see laws put into place that allowed the people to evaluate their elected official and have that determine the compensation given.

I challenge you to push for such legislation. Remove the elitism that has been setup in our government bodies. Our constitution never intended that elected officials be elitist or given special privilege, but rather that they be given the resources to perform their job and to represent those that elect them.

I know such legislation this does not set well, which just re-enforces the very points I have made. If you are truly honest with yourself, you would have to agree that I am not off base.

Move to put our nation on a firmer foundation. 

I respect the value of your time but your person acknowledgment of this letter would be greatly appreciated.

Respectfully
Drew Terry

Lets see if we can engage the people of this great nation.  Get involved in what our nation is and where it is headed.

If you would like to have your voice hear by Speaker Pelosi, click here.  To have your voice hear by your Congressional representative click here.  Remember be respectful, but firm.  If you are seen as a fanatic you will not get very far.

If you want a little background on what caused me to write to the Speaker watch this video clip.