Talk show hosts are telling you exactly what you should do, and the people around you are constantly trying to get you to vote their way.

Congratulations, you just became a member of Congress.

Alright, maybe not really, but in a sense, you are going through one day of what goes on for voting members of congress every day of the year. Lobbyists, other politicians, talking heads, etc are constantly trying to sway the congressional members to vote their way.

The result is that they don’t always fully understand what they are voting for, or why. They go along with their influences and vote in accordance, completely forsaking thier duties and responsibilities.

The notorious health care bill was passed by a large amount of people who never read the bill. It is what is helping to spur the Tea Party movement, and energize conservative voters to get out this election and make their voice heard. Chants of “Read the Bill” have been heard at rallies around the nation in protest of the audacity of congress to vote on something they don’t understand…

… But have you done the same?

Recommendations are a good way to get a sense of a candidate or proposition. If you are a strong supporter of Sarah Palin, you may be more inclined to agree with a candidate that she has endorsed. However, that does not mean you should hand over your sacred vote to that candidate solely based on some other person’s endorsement.

Too many voters are doing exactly what they accuse Congress of doing. They are voting without understanding what or who they are voting for and why. I have heard countless people tell me they just don’t have the time to do the research and it’s too hard.  They simply look at a voter guide that a party or group has published and fill it out, without ever questioning a single choice.

Is that not the same thing as not reading a bill and voting for it anyways?

I take hours to vote. I look at each item on my ballot and look up the information and understand what my vote means. Yes, at times I take into consideration what someone may say, but simply as counsel in my own decision. I do not let someone else fill out my ballot.

If you are going to consider yourself a Patriot, act like one.

The Patriots who founded this nation and faced unbelievable odds for the chance to be able to vote, choose their leaders, and shape their own destinies, did so at great inconvenience. They risked everything, gave up their time, fortunes, security, and even their lives.

How shameful that even among the many who care enough to vote, which historically speaking will be less than half of registered voters this election, many will simply choose to let someone else think for them, because it is just too hard and time consuming.

Don’t be counted among them.

Take everything into consideration. Do your own research. Be able to say you understand your vote and are able to give an account for it.

Don’t be a hypocrite. Be a Patriot.

Her answer reveals exactly why Americans are frustrated with Congress, and why incumbents like her are in trouble:

“I don’t know what it is.”

There’s really no excuse!

H.R. 3808 would make states recognize documents notarized in other states. It has drawn wide criticism, since many banks have recently admitted that they have been using people called “robo-signers” to sign hundreds of documents without reading them. That is partly why Bank of America and other banks have halted foreclosures in the past few days.

H.R. 3808 could theoretically allow abuses of the foreclosure process to happen more easily. Yet it passed unanimously and without debate in both the House and the Senate, because nobody bothered to read it or object to it.

Unlike the ObamaCare legislation, H.R. 3808 is not thousands of pages long. In fact, it is less than one page long.

Yet almost nobody, Republican or Democrat, bothered to examine it or to think about its possible effects.

On Thursday, the White House announced that President Barack Obama would not sign H.R. 3808. The decision made big news: as the Wall Street Journal noted, “It is technically his second pocket veto, but the first of a bill the White House opposed.”

The news was carried in most major newspapers. H.R. 3808 was the subject of the lead editorial in the Journal. Floyd Norris of the New York Times wrote that a friend had called the bill: “Forgery Is O.K. When the Bank Does It Act.”

Some argue that H.R. 3808 is necessary to help banks clear their bad loans and restore life to the housing market. Regardless, any politician who really cares about foreclosures ought to have known about H.R. 3808. But Schakowsky didn’t, though she talked about the “corrupt” nature of the foreclosure process. She added: “I don’t know the specifics of that legislation.”

The irony for Schakowsky is that the candidate forum in which she was asked about H.R. 3808 was on Devon Avenue–the very street she claimed to have “saved” from foreclosures in September.

In reality, her intervention on Devon Avenue represented the worst of Chicago pay-to-play politics. And her answer to a sincere, non-planted question was a complete blank.

Schakowsky has repeatedly blamed Wall Street’s “recklessness” for the financial crisis and the foreclosure mess. Yet her failure to inform herself about H.R. 3808–even after President Obama says he’ll veto it–sets a new standard for “reckless.”

If members of Congress can’t be bothered to read a short bill before they vote for it–never mind a long one–why should we send them back to Washington?

One thing our founding fathers could not foresee… was a nation governed by professional politicians who have a vested interest in getting reelected.  They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then looking forward to getting back to the farm.” — Ronald Reagan

The energy of 1994 led to the Contract with America, and the huge Republican victory of that year.  It was a victory for Republicans, but was it a victory for America?

The Contract with America had an inherent flaw.  It was a political party bargaining with Americans:  give us power and this is what we will do for you.  The Freshmen 50 is different:  it is Americans telling the federal government what it will do.

We are citizen-candidates united on a platform of six simple and realistic reforms for our government:

• Apply the Law Equally: All laws that apply to all citizens also apply to Congress
• Term Limits: Limit terms in Congress to no more than 12 years in the House and Senate, respectively
• Enforce Congressional Ethics: Yearly tax and expense audits, former Congressmen and their staff cannot be lobbyists, allow the ethics committee to do their job
• Read the Bill: Prior to final vote, the entire bill must be read out loud on the floor of the House; if a representative is not present for the entire reading, he cannot vote
• Tax Reform: Repeal our current tax code in favor of one that taxes only once, at one rate, and require a 2/3-majority vote for any new tax
• Balance the Budget: Amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget

We are unique.

We have never been elected to the House or Senate.  We have left our jobs and normal lives.  We are ophthalmologists, teachers, pilots, military vets and reservists, stay-at-home-moms, small businessmen … we are American citizens, and we will hold each other accountable.

I started the Freshmen 50 in summer 2009, when I decided to make a run for Arizona’s 8^th Congressional District.  But I understand something very significant:  I cannot change Washington by myself.  After looking at some of the other candidates around the country, I saw that we could have a strong coalition going in together in January 2011.  Finally, we can put into law the reforms the American people want.

Please go to the website and view the scores of candidates who have signed on.  Any candidate can still become part of the “Bullpen”, so long as they agree to the platform.  The final 50 candidates will be selected in the fall as we go into the general election based on a combination of their respective chance of success and the degree to which The Freshmen 50 PAC can make the biggest impact on the status quo.  The final 50 candidates will receive PAC money and a national advertising campaign will be launched on their behalf.

The only way we will be successful is for millions of Americans to contribute a little bit each.  The Freshmen 50 provides the focus to break through Washington’s status quo.

The Freshmen 50 is a PAC, but unlike most PACs, there is no special interest behind it.  It’s just you, me, and the radical notion that “We the People” should represent our neighbors responsibly.

Americans are demanding change in the way Congress works.  Recognizing this, I and other reform-minded congressional Republicans this week will put forth a new transparency initiative – a series of common-sense congressional reforms aimed at bringing some much-needed openness and accountability to the House.

In just 10 months, with help from the Obama White House, Speaker Pelosi’s Congress has taken business-as-usual to a devastating new extreme.  The American people have watched Congress rush through a massive “stimulus” spending bill no one read; a massive $410 billion omnibus spending bill loaded with thousands of un-scrutinized earmarks; and a new “cap and trade” national energy tax loaded with special-interest giveaways unveiled at 3:00 am on the morning before a vote.

Now the White House is pushing for a final year-end bill – which will be written in secret by the majority behind closed doors – to replace the current health care system with government-run care, and transform about one-sixth of our nation’s economy.  The bill will be hammered out in a private, partisan House-Senate conference committee with no public access or scrutiny, in direct contradiction of President Obama’s pledge that such talks would be televised on C-SPAN.

These are the actions of a Democratic majority that has forgotten it’s the American people who are really in charge.  These are actions designed to shut the American people out while politicians go about the business of limiting their freedom.  And in an era of 10.2 percent unemployment, mounting debt, seemingly endless bailouts, and rapidly expanding government, these abuses are the last straw for the American people, who’ve clearly had enough.

Republicans have had enough, too.  The House GOP congressional transparency initiative includes common-sense changes such as “read the bill” reform that would require all bills to be posted online for a minimum of 72 hours before they are brought to a vote.  We also believe:

• Members’ committee votes should be posted online within 48 hours so the American people can see how their representatives voted.
• Committees should be required to post the text of adopted bills online within 24 hours of adoption to end the practice of “phantom amendments” being added to bills secretly after they pass at the committee level.
• Major negotiations on sweeping bills that would dramatically expand the reach of the federal government – such as the current government takeover of health care – should be open to the public and subject to a full and honest debate when bills reach the floor.
• Cameras should be allowed in the secretive House Rules Committee, the panel that decides which bills and amendments come to a vote.

Our transparency initiative calls for immediate implementation of all of these reforms.  We’re calling on Speaker Pelosi to bring all of them to an immediate vote.   If she won’t do it, a Republican majority will.  You can read more about the House GOP congressional transparency initiative online, at http://gopleader.gov/readthebill.

Did Republicans miss an opportunity to enact common-sense changes like these when we were in the majority?  Yes — and we won’t make the mistake again.  With this initiative, we’re taking some common-sense steps to renew the drive for an open and accountable Congress.  We recognize restoring the bonds of trust between the American people and their elected leaders starts with changing Congress itself.  We hope Speaker Pelosi will join us, and allow these common-sense reforms to go forward.

Sometime this year, perhaps very soon, both chambers in Congress likely will be asked to vote on a monumental healthcare bill — monumental in its scope, its cost, and the actual number of pages in the legislation.

And while many important questions about the final draft of the bill remain, here’s one that most Americans are shocked we even have to ask: “Will members of Congress be given enough time to read and understand the bill before casting a vote?”

The answer, based on prior behavior, is “probably not.”

Earlier this year, members, the public, and press were given 12 hours to review the 1,073-page long stimulus bill that cost future generations of Americans (since we’re borrowing just about everything at this point) $787 billion. Not a single member I talked to read it before the vote. I doubt Evelyn Wood could have even pulled it off.

The cap and trade bill, which would cost $846 billion and weighs in at 1,428 pages, was available for 16.5 hours before the House vote.

But this isn’t a partisan problem: under Republican rule in 2003, for example, the 852-page Medicare Part D bill was available for 29 hours before a vote was called on the $395 billion legislation.

It happens more often than anyone would like to admit. According to the Sunlight Foundation, this year alone transparency rules have been waived at least two dozen times to rush legislation to the floor.

So here’s that pesky question again: Will Speaker Pelosi give members of Congress — and the press and public, for that matter — enough time to read and understand the bill before voting on it?

To ensure that the answer to that question is, “Yes,” I have launched a discharge petition to bring a vote on H. Res. 554, which was authored by my good friend and partner in this fight, Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.). H. Res. 554 simply requires a waiting period of at least 72 hours before any legislation could be voted on in the House.

H. Res. 554 has been bottled up in committee for months and the majority has no plans to bring it to the floor for an up-or-down vote.

That means the only way we can force a vote on it and bring some transparency to the peoples’ house is through a discharge petition.

Here’s how it works: to force an up-or-down vote, we need 218 signatures from members of Congress on the petition. As of this writing, we have 182 bipartisan signatures. That leaves us 36 signatures short of bringing real change to how the House conducts its business.

You can follow the progress here. Find out if your representative has signed the discharge petition.

All we’re asking for is 72 hours to actually figure out what’s in these important bills before a vote. The waiting period isn’t solely an exercise for members of Congress. The public and press have a right to know what’s buried in these bills too. Under H. Res. 554, all bills would be required to be posted in a searchable format online.

After all, transparency is the antiseptic to a flawed legislative process. We’re not asking for much. Three days. That’s all.

All we need are 36 more signatures. Go to www.wethepeoplecanread.org to find out where your member of Congress stands on this commonsense issue, and help us shine a little light on Congress.