Mid-Term Voters Preferred Status Quo; Bad News for Change Advocates
By Joe Guzzardi
Voters are, to understate their mood, disenchanted with Congress. Yet paradoxically, voters re-elect, over and over, the same representatives they hold in dismally low esteem, consider ineffectual and out-of-touch.
On average for 2022, about 80 percent of polling respondents disapproved of how congressional representatives handled their jobs. Many critics had previously claimed that underrepresentation of women and diverse legislators was a key reason that Congress was so incompetent. But the 117th Congress was the most racially and gender diverse in history. In 2022, 142 women were in the U.S. House of Representatives, a record high. Despite these House gains, voters maintained their same opinion of Congress – a bungling, self-important body that does little right.
In November, when the moment-of-truth mid-term election was held, 73 percent of voters disapproved of incumbents’ job performance. But the vote count told a different tale. Despite their 73 percent disapproval rate, congressional incumbents had a 98 percent win rate. Forty-one states had a 100 percent win rate in congressional races. The takeaway: talk is cheap, but the votes tell the true story. Overwhelmingly, the majority wants to maintain the status quo.
The status quo translates into continuing high inflation which in 2022 averaged 8.4 percent per month. Status quo also means national debt mounting from its current $31 trillion and funding the Ukraine war which, with Biden’s signature on a $1.9 trillion omnibus spending bill, will put the U.S. investment in the faraway conflict at $100 billion.
As entrenched as those costs are, Biden’s open border is another unsustainable drain on taxpayers’ pocketbooks. To provide public education, Medicaid and other affirmative benefits to the 1.35 million illegal immigrants that have become part of the general population since Biden took office will cost taxpayers $100 billion over the aliens’ lifetimes. Many recent arrivals have limited education and English language skills, so jobs they may end up accepting likely will pay little.
Regardless of which candidate voters supported in the 2020 presidential election, only a tiny percentage would have cast their ballots in favor of adopting the current border policy. For the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, Customs and Border Protection reported that it had released 430,677 aliens into the interior, witnessed 240,340 migrants the agency calls “gotaways” and expelled 186,340 illegal immigrants. Agents caution that their official numbers may be low because many more aliens may have escaped without CBP’s knowledge. Nine out of 10 agents, a whistleblower reported, are away from the line.
The southwest border chaos also represents a dangerous criminal threat to innocent citizens. Too many migrants have either criminal or terrorist histories. Retiring Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told his agents that known or suspected terrorists, as identified in the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, are entering in huge numbers, representing “a real threat.”
CBP, which operates at ports of entry and along the border between entry ports, reportedthat during fiscal year 2022, they encountered more than 25,000 convicted criminals. When the numbers that pour across the border total millions, ill-intended people will be among them.
The argument against the border “management” of Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas shouldn’t be construed as anti-immigrant. Rather, the disagreement reflects reasonable questioning about the wisdom of open borders and a sincere concern that citizens are funding the administration’s immigration follies that only it approves of.
The border crisis is a direct result of the Biden’s administration’s willingness to allow anyone from anywhere to enter the U.S., even though the electorate is strongly opposed to such recklessness. The nation wants a responsible, sensible immigration policy, a prudent but, to date, elusive goal.
Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
This is all well and good if you belive the elections aren’t rigged. Personally I don’t believe there have been legitimate elections in the USA since at least 2012.
100% reelection of encumbants is believable in the sense that precincts in Philadelphia had over 100% turnout with zero votes cast for republican candidates.
Elections have consequences. Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences.
With elections run the way they are run now? Do they really vote the same way? The media lies about anything that is not globally run, and somehow these political people can wipe out bad doings from this internet so people can not research them and really get the truth too so what are you voting for? Small start up new Political Parties that appear to be honest and are only in your own country are sued so much and cannot get anything but lies if this media decides to even say anything about them. The bigger Parties are all WEF globalists and lie constantly.
I am a Canadian and our radical globalist government commits unethical crimes and keeps secrets constantly but it is all globalist and is just almost required that the other WEF Parties and paid media continue supporting them while we complain about them. It is so ridiculous but then too many are just going along to get along and do not care or believe the media lies and many do not even vote, or say who cares they all are liars. During this plannedemic they opened so few polls that people were lined up crowded together waiting outside in the rain and cold, I am in a wheelchair but always have voted, I guess they thought this would make it so uncomfortable that many would give up voting and I watched many just leave I was taken over three times during the day and waited and waited it was the poorest run election in my old lifetime, but was my vote even counted?