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Regarding your reply 331, it is a good question that I have yet to consider but after just several seconds of consideration and by way of comparison of legislative bodies I think you may elicit some useful discourse.

I live in NH. Our state legislative body is essentially a volunteer government. Pay is $100 per year. We have no broad based tax or base for it identified. Generally speaking, we get good or even great government. Just the other day a bill was sponsored that would allow anybody without a felony conviction to carry a concealed weapon without any sort of registration or license. I like that and it is because the government listens to the interests of the citizens, not those who can broaden their power or make them rich, because there are few mechanisms, with the situation of taxation, where nearly all tax is locally raised and collected, to make law for the sake of getting rich or more powerful. US congress does this through appropriation bills payed for with excessive taxation, beyond the scope of the US Constitution, and by controlling the code of such taxation. Corruption is the money, taxation is the means. It will do no Senator good for his career to turn the system upside down with respect to taxation and spending. If you do not believe me, read about GWB. The only caveat here is that he wants us to believe we are being taxed less even as the expenditures rise. We or our children still have to pay for these unfunded spending bills.

So for your answer, the more money and power are concentrated in a government body, the harder it will be to do the right thing. If in fact they can appear to do some of the right things and in the effort increase the total taxation, they will. Outside of this, if there is an issue with little or no economic consequence or tax issue, it is possible for congress to make a decision favorable to our free republic. Such a decision is the debate and subsequent law forbidding late term abortion. I suspect very little pork was attached to that bill or poison pills in the form of unpopular amendments to cause the initial idea to become moot or to cause it's defeat. So, yea, Congress can do some things correctly, but not issues regarding taxation, at least as it applies to the intent of the founders, who after all fought the King over a tax of about 5%.

To go back to NH, it is said that the only way for a politician to become rich is to be involved with road construction in the form of graft and deal making, after all, it is nearly all federal money, and, by involving oneself with the electric power industry as the receipts are controlled by a government function. John Sununu Sr., former governor and consultant to the nuclear power industry, became a millionaire while in office. NH now has the highest electric costs in the nation, thanks to Seabrook Station and a crooked politician, IMHO.

"If in fact they can appear to do some of the right things and in the effort increase the total taxation, they will. Outside of this, if there is an issue with little or no economic consequence or tax issue, it is possible for congress to make a decision favorable to our free republic."

That may be true as long as we as voters tolerate it. The only effective defense against elected officials acting in their own benefit instead of ours is the ballot box. There are numerous examples of that mechanism working. For example, I am of the opinion that here in Georgia, that is exactly the reason that Max Cleland is no longer a US senator. He went to Washington for one term and voted in a manner inconsistent with that of those who sent him to represent them. Those same voters brought him back home after they realized the error of their ways. Some politicians are more skilled than Mr. Cleland at rationalizing their voting record, apparently. I cannot understand, for example, how the 2 Dakotas, which are strongly Republican, currently have 4 Democratic senators representing them.