To the editor:

Sen. Claire McCaskill asked the right question at a recent town hall meeting: “Don’t you trust me?” She didn’t like the answer: “NO.” The fact is that the American people do not trust Congress. Not when it passes massive legislation in the middle of the night, without comment or even reading it. Not when it can’t run a simple program like Cash for Clunkers efficiently. There are dealers who have sold over 200 cars and have yet to see a dime from this program.

Trust them to put together a good health care system? Not when important provisions like Comparative Effectiveness Research and its advisory board were passed in the stimulus package to evaluate treatments and their effectiveness and issue guidelines for their use without discussing them with us. That wouldn’t ration health care, would it? Not like Oregon, where a cancer patient needed a drug but was denied because it was too expensive. The pharmaceutical company gave it to her free. Oregon would help her end her life, though.

Not when TARP fund disbursements were influenced strongly by lobby groups, instead of good fiscal policy. Not when the omnibus bill, cap & trade, and others are filled with the same pork barrel projects as usual.

When our elected officials take the time to read and understand what they are voting on, when they pass the information on to us in an understandable format instead of convoluted legalese, when they actually listen to their employers’ (us) concerns, then maybe we will trust them. But not right now, not hardly.