The NRA and Congressional Accountability

There is an article today by AP writer Julie Hirschfield Davis talking about the NRA and its sway over congress. The article mentions specific examples of NRA clout and quotes both the Brady Campaign and the NRA-ILA heads talking about the effectiveness of the NRA as a political machine.

Whether you stand by the NRA (and I do) or not (the Brady Campaign does not) the article makes it pretty clear that the motivated members of the NRA still have enormous power over Congress. It also makes clear that the source of that power is the fear of those members not giving their political support to any congressperson who doesn’t vote the values of the NRA. The NRA-ILA “grades” the congressperson based on what votes they cast. The implied threat is “We’re watching you, if you vote the wrong way, there will be consequences”.

The NRA it seems, holds Congress accountable for its votes.

Frankly, I wish that there was someone else out there actually keeping tabs on who voted for what and when on every single vote by every single congressperson. To my knowledge, there is no organization that does this at present, not one in the private sector anyway. While votes are a matter of public record, it is exceedingly difficult to find and compile the information and those organizations who do this are usually partisan organizations like the NRA or Brady Campaign who are keeping tabs only on the votes that count towards their agendas. And let’s not forget about the various rules and regulations in the house and senate that allow for secret votes and the like.

There is probably money to be made for any organization that would undertake this behemoth task in a “non partisan” way. And frankly, I don’t understand why someone is not out there doing it. While most voters are single issue voters, there are some of us who would like a report on exactly what our congresspersons are voting for and against.

And where is the press on this? Isn’t this their “actual” job? Shouldn’t they be the watchdogs out there keeping tabs on this kind of thing? Why isn’t there a weekly or even daily report from someone out in the field over who voted for what? Are you telling me that in today’s technologically advanced day and time we can’t have individualized reports of who voted for what sent to our emails if we wanted?

The way things are now, if the first step to holding someone accountable is obtaining the facts bringing them out into the open, then the American people will never be able or willing to hold Congress accountable for their actions. Meaning we’ll get the same old idiots doing the same old idiotic stuff year after year forever. Amen.