The presidential election this November is expected to be close. That's not the case with most congressional races across the United States.

If competitive political races are good for democracy, then government in the U.S., from Congress to state and local offices, is ailing.

A clear symptom is the re-election rate in Congress. In recent years, the re-election rate for congressional incumbents has been well over 90 percent.

Name recognition, paired with well-financed campaigns funded by special interests who have received favors in the past or might receive favors in the future, have all combined to give incumbents a huge advantage over challengers.

Evidence of this condition was illustrated in recent stories in the Butler Eagle examining the campaign funds raised by U.S. Reps. Phil English and Melissa Hart.

Campaign figures reveal that English's re-election effort has raised $857,101 while his Democratic challenger Steven Porter amassed a grand total $22,809, not counting $80,000 in personal loans to be used in Porter's campaign.

Two-thirds of English's campaign funds in the most recent quarter came from Political Action Committees or PACs.

Given the funding imbalance, it would seem English, a five-term incumbent from Erie, will be re-elected - for as many years as he chooses to run. It's the same for most of his colleagues in the House.

For Melissa Hart, a two-term congresswoman from Bradford Woods, the fund-raising numbers tell a similar story. Hart's re-election committee has raised $961,586 for the upcoming election. Her challenger, Stevan Drobac Jr., has pulled in a grand total of $3,376.

As the election season heats up, Hart had approximately $420,000 in her war chest. Drobac, a laid-off US Airways flight attendant, has about $1,822 cash available for the November election.

Clearly, English and Hart have no need for additional campaign funds. Yet most observers expect each candidate to hold more fund raising functions between now and the election. Most voters, even Republican supporters, would have to wonder why.

English and Hart might well be serving their constituents well, but the feeble funding of challengers cannot be a sign of a robust political system. The English and Hart stories are being played out across most of America. That explains the 98.5 re-election rate for Congress last election.

The most recent efforts at campaign reform, the McCain-Feingold law, might actually tip the scales further toward incumbents by limiting what candidates can raise.

But without realistic challenges, elected members of Congress begin to look more like royalty of old - in power for life. Without realistic challengers and a healthy level of turnover in Congress, our current version of representative government departs from the vision established by the Founding Fathers.

George Washington served two terms as president, then chose to leave office. In the first 125 years of this country, about one-third of the members of the House chose not to run for re-election. The citizen-legislators returned to their former lives after serving in Washington because was good for the citizen-lawmakers and because it was good for the nation.

With today's professional politicians who are often elected for life, some of the important ideals of the founders of the nation have been lost.