Do nothing all over again

There are 435 members of the U. S. House of Representatives, and 100 members of its more prestigious counterpart, the U. S. Senate. Those members of Congress who do not have any special duties each command a salary of $165,200 per year. Rank, in Congress, or more fully, R,iC,HIP, has its privileges. The Speaker of the House, for instance, who is third in line to succeed to the Presidency, brings in $212,100 a year. The majority and minority leaders each get $183,500 a year. (The astute reader will note that nowhere in the above figures is the verb “earned” used.) All together, a full year’s cumulative salary for Congress (including the Senate) sets the American taxpayer back some $73,597,500 (give or take a few hundred thousand here and there in bribe money), not including the beanies..

And what does the average American get in return for the generous salaries given to their federal lawmakers? One would suspect, indeed, one should expect, that that amount of money would get a corresponding amount of work. Not according to the Center for Media and Democracy (www.prwatch.org),whose calculations are that this Congress will have been in session a whole 79 days for the entire year. (Just imagine what these people would earn if they did work everyday.)

This contrasts rather badly with the Congresses from the ‘90’s, especially the ones that met in the years from 1994-96, whose number of days in session peaked in 1995 at around 200 days. Mind you, 200 days, as staggering as it must have been for those who were involved, is hardly a full year’s work. Still, the effort was well worth it. The reader will recall these years as the ones that finally saw us come up with a balanced federal budget, and for a few heady years, we even produced a surplus.

So what about all those hot-button issues that are facing us as a nation? What has this Congress done to address them? What about immigration reform? Sorry. It seems all we could get was our version of the Berlin Wall. The biggest difference with the original is that this $2.2 billion boondoggle, aside from being a lot more expensive, is meant to keep people out, not in. The only thing you can be sure of is that it will cost considerably more than has been estimated, as do all projects planned in Washington, and will not work nearly as well as expected.

How about the reform legislation that was supposed to make its way through this Congress following the Jack Abramoff scandal and the scandals (of his own making) that drove out the House Majority leader, Tom DeLay, among others? You remember how everybody was all hot and bothered to rid government of the corrupting influence of money? (As if that was going to happen. You might just as well expect a vampire to give up blood.) Again, a no-starter. Sorry, but this Congress simply did not have time to pass this legislation.

Does this Congress have nothing about which to brag, no noteworthy accomplishments at all? Well, among other things, they did extend the tax cuts for the very wealthy. And they did argue somewhat about the deadly effect same-sex marriage would have on conventional marriage, and half-heartedly proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between people of different sexes. And they also tried to amend the U. S. Constitution to ban flag-burning, even though it would negate the part of the 1st Amendment that guarantees freedom of expression. It is just as well, however, because, as with many of its other efforts, it characteristically failed. And they tried to make a deal to up the minimum wage. The deal went something like this; we’ll up the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour (phased in over 3 years) if you’ll give us $268 billion (over a ten year period) in cuts to the estate tax for our super-wealthy friends. Strangely enough, this deal also fell through. (I can’t imagine turning down a deal like that.) Oh, yeah, and they cut student aid by $13 billion. Of course, this will assist the military in reaching their recruiting goals, as military service may be the only way many will now be able to afford secondary education. That, and they gave the banking industry the new and improved bankruptcy law that it wanted ( and probably wrote)

So what was it that kept this Congress from meeting more often that it did? In a word, the same thing that kept reform legislation from being passed, the crying need of its members to raise re-election cash. In fact, the first thing that a member of Congress must do, following a successful campaign, is to immediately begin to raise more money. Even those whose seats are seldom, if ever, seriously challenged, must do their part to raise cash. Why does a member whose re-election is assured need to raise money? Simple, money now trumps seniority in this Congress when it comes down to choice committee assignments. The member gives his excess campaign cash to his party to help elect others of his political persuasion to this institution, and in turn…oh, we already said that, didn’t we?

Of course this can backfire. The disgraced former member of Congress from Florida, Mark Foley, gave $100,000 to the GOP fund to help it keep its majority in Congress, and there are those who are crass enough to suggest that perhaps that is why the majority party kept a lid on his propensity to send suggestive e-mail to former pages. This is definitely not how this sort of thing was supposed to work.

Still, the whole thing could be much worse. After all, all that is taking place with Congress is that its members are courting the very wealthy to get enough money to keep their cushy lifestyles intact, while re-assuring those who do the funding that they will always have assess to the inner workings of the federal government. Anybody with a brain can see that this is strictly a platonic relationship. Symbiosis like this can be a beautiful thing. And no laws are being broken, either, even if it does feel kind of like a “Brokeback Mountain” romance. Still, it’s not like they are trying to buy or sell votes on election grounds, is it?