This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The GOP is a party of personal accountability. If you give people a free handout then they have no incentive to work, according to them. I didn't think that I necessarily always agreed with this but I have found out that it can be true.
Let me give one example. In Utah, you simply have to be a Republican to get elected to represent our great state in the U.S. Congress. So you can see in their behavior that our representatives have no incentive to work: Knowing that just being in the right party is enough to keep their job. As a result, our representatives work harder to keep their political party happy over serving their constituents.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz is the best example recently. He is doubling down on his threats to investigate the man who is trying to keep government officials accountable and ethical. The irony is that he promised years of investigations against Hillary Clinton but Donald Trump's very apparent conflicts of interests would be a "fishing expedition."
Maybe it's time we take away this entitlement since he obviously doesn't work for the American people and Utahns, but rather for his political party and his new leader, Trump.
Daniel Toole
Layton