I guess eating a turkey is more important than making sure real hardworking Americans can afford one.
As I sit here and read the devastating headlines that flash across my newspaper and TV and computer screens, the one glaring headline that jumps out at me most is our hardworking Congress calling it quits for the year.
Our economy is in shambles with the Big-3 auto industry on the verge of complete collapse, and all Congress can say is ‘Oh well, we couldn’t come to an agreement in these last couple of days. Sorry about your luck, America. We’ll see you in January!’
I want to know what gives them the right. Sure, if America is running smoothly and they truly have nothing to do, let them take a SIX WEEK vacation. But in my eyes, when we are facing as many problems as we are, and an industry that employs over 3 million Americans is on the verge of collapse, they have no business calling it quits yet.
Every other working American is expected to put in an honest week’s work, why aren’t our government officials held to that same standard? When someone falls behind in their work, or is faced with a problem on the job, he or she is expected to put in overtime until the problem is fixed. The same should go for our bloated, fat-cat Congress!
In searching the internet I found the number of days Congress was in session this year and past years. According to an article in the Washington Post, the average number of days a year for Congress to be in session in the 1960s and 70s was 323 days. In the 80s and 90s that number dropped to 278.
At the website,
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/ds/, you can look up the number of days in session for every year since the 70s. In 2008, the Senate was only in session for 165 days, and the House was only in session for a whopping 115 days! And the last I checked, our politicians weren’t exactly getting paid an hourly wage.
This is fundamentally very wrong. Before we can fix our country, we must fix the people who run it. Democrats, Republicans, they are all politicians. It’s time our politicians started showing something of themselves. With the country and the world in the state it’s in, they have no business adjourning for the year. They should be working every day, burning the midnight oil if they must, to get America back on the right track.
When Harry Reid tells the New York Times, “I want everyone to understand no matter how hard we work, how hard we try, the House of Representatives is going home tomorrow. O.K.? They’re leaving,” it makes my blood boil. What if an average American said that to their boss? That’s right, they’d be fired.
Perhaps if our Congress actually worked as much as the average American, something would actually get accomplished. Just think how great our country would be if our politicians actually gave 100 percent on the job, instead of just over 30 percent. And that’s not even taking into consideration the corruption that needs to be cleaned up!
It’s time our government really started stepping up and doing their job before they drive our country straight into bankruptcy, or worse. If they don’t, there might just be A LOT of pitchfork-wielding Americans storming the very steps of the Capitol Building.
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