The Waiting Game.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: Vox Populist

Change is not the same thing as progress. In fact, change can be the exact opposite. It can be regressive, as we're now learning from where else?--Congress.

A flock of tea party-infused Republicans has certainly changed the political dynamic there. Exultant GOP leaders are claiming that they are now the voice of "The People." But most people won't find themselves represented by this change, much less see it as progress.

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That's because the newcomers in Congress, whether Republican or Democrat, tend to live high up the economic ladder, way out of touch with the people they're representing. Indeed, 40 percent of newly elected House members are millionaires, as are 60 percent of new Senators. While the great majority of workaday Americans are struggling to make it on about $30,000 a year--having, at best, puny pensions and iffy health coverage--these incoming lawmakers tend to be sitting pretty on hundreds of thousands of dollars each in accumulated wealth. Their financial reports show them holding extensive personal investments in such outfits as Wall Street banks, oil giants, and drugmakers. The new majority is literally the voice of millionaires.

Their wealth and financial ties might help explain the rush by the new Republican House majority to coddle these corporate powers. From gutting EPA's anti-pollution restrictions on Big Oil to undoing the restraints on Wall Street greed, they're pushing for a return to the same ideology that has gotten our country in massive messes. At the same time, they're out to kill a green jobs program, bust unions, cut Social Security, defund Head Start, and generally stomp on the fingers of working families trying to hold onto the middle class rungs of the economic ladder.

However, there is one piece of uplifting economic news that's sure to bolster the millionaire Congress's solidarity with "The People"--meaning the people who actually count in their universe.

Forbes magazine reports that there are 199 more billionaires this year than last. Moreover, the combined...