Member's Rights?

I heard a story on Marketplace tonight that really got my wheels going.

They were talking about how as part of the all in vogue legislative lobbying reform that many people believe that it is necessary to eliminate the practice of having "legislative earmarks." For those that didn't hear the story an earmark is where a given legislator gets to write into the bill how particular funding will be spent and it then cannot be redirected by the agency that gets the money.

It is probably the highest volume vector for delivering pork, and in fairly clear terms very high motivation for lobbyists to try to buy congressmen. Very, very high return on investment.

Naturally, there are some congressmen taking one for the team so to speak in opposing the reform initiative. One of these people is the House Speaker Denny Hastert. When asked to fill out his position he said (something to the effect of):

We have to protect the right of members to represent their individual districts.

Rights of members? Isn't that a little bit upside down? Should he really have said something like:

We shouldn't do anything to infringe the rights of the constituents to fair representation within the legislature.

Now I know why they are always reserving the right to revise and extend their remarks. I believe that this off the cuff remark is fairly telling, and that on the whole representatives do look at their service as some sort of right for them. Really I think that it ought to be paramount for all of them to remember, even in this sort of informal remark that they serve at the pleasure of their constituencies- not the other way around.