Congress is on a One-Hundred-Day Paid Vacation

In the past three months the House of Representative has been in session exactly 12 days.  Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has now cancelled the last two weeks of the session scheduled for the last of September and all of October.  The House will not be in session again until after the midterm elections. 

Despite a backlog of legislative responsibilities, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has canceled the final two weeks of the September legislative session.  That leaves House lawmakers only one more 4-day work week before the midterm elections. The chamber won’t be reconvened until mid-November.  That amounts to over 100 days of paid vacation. 

The average salary of a member of the United States Congress is $174,000.  That puts them in the top 5% of income earners in the United States. If you divide that salary by the days they have been in session, they are making about $608 per day.  I ask you, are you getting your money’s worth? 

Ninety-five per cent of you earn less than that, but no matter what your income, if you are a full-time employee, you put in about 47 hours per week.  But not your congressman.  The House of Representatives have put in a full week of work exactly 14% of the time in the last 36 years.  Since 1978, our legislators have worked two full weeks out of every 5 months!

But let’s not stop there.  In the House of Representatives every Congressman gets an allowance of not quite $1 million to hire up to 18 personal aides.  Maintaining a typical Senatorial office costs the taxpayer $2.5 million per office.  Of course, the bigger the state and more prestigious the office the greater the cost, but you get the drift.  The Senate also spends $370,000/year to maintain its own hair salon.  The senatorial stylists are paid $70,000 per year.  The average Washington stylist earns $27,000.  No wonder they all have good hair! 

The question is no longer, “Are you getting your money’s worth?”  It is now, “Do you feel like a sucker?”  To which the only appropriate answers are “No.” and “Yes.” 

If Congressmen need all these people and all this money it must be because lots of good things are being done, right?  Well, no.  The average number of bills (laws) that a Congress produces in its two-year terms is 200-600.  This Congress has produced 103, not even half of the low end of average. 

Every two years we will elect every member of the House of Representatives and approximately a third (35 members) of the Senate.  There are lots of reasons to vote for each of these people.  There are even some reasons to vote against some of them.  But any employee (which is what they are) who has a salary in the top 5% but shows up to work less than half the time needs to pass a stiff sniff test to earn my vote.  Little Mike Johnson and his fellow Republicans reek like an August port-a-potty. 

Labor Day celebrates and honors all the people who work for a living.  Not everyone gets the day off, of course, but 78% of all workers and 85% of union workers do get to stay home on Labor Day, enjoying family time, end-of-summer fun, barbeques, parades and parties. 

The workers we honor on Labor Day know what you call someone who takes a $174,000 salary but only shows up 12 days out of 100—and you don’t call them Congressman. 

Look at the facts and keep the faith. 

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