They Are At It Again.

The Congress has quietly voted themselves a raise to $168,500. The House of Representatives stuck it in a bill to fund the Department of Transportation and other agencies, so you probably won’t hear much about it. The median income in the U.S. is $53,692, according to the 2004 U.S. Census figures. How can they represent us if they don’t have to live like us?

I don’t think they really need the money. After all, they raise millions of dollars just to get elected to the job. And, if they are representing us, they should have to live like us. They don’t. They maintain households in the Washington area as well as in their home state. Through our generosity, we afford them expenses, benefits and perks that the rest of us could only imagine, and they just keep taking more.

The founding fathers never anticipated that being a member of Congress would be a full time job, at least not in the capitol. They were supposed to spend their time in their home states and travel to the capitol to hold sessions. Instead, they rule from afar. Once in a while, they come home and ride in a parade. For the last year in their term, they spend most of the time trying to find a new job. I wish my boss would let me take off and look for a job with full pay, don’t you? If they lose their job, they still get full pay as a pension. I’ll bet that you voted for that didn’t you?

It’s time we eliminated this ruling class. If these "princes" and "princesses" had to get by on the same standards that the rest of us do, they would be more frugal with our money. Let’s start by setting their base pay at the median American income. For housing, let’s assign them shared hotel rooms, after the YMCA is full. And, for every day they don’t show up to work, we’ll dock their pay. We’ll also dock them when the come late or leave early. Their full pension will only come after they have had the job for 10 or more consecutive years, but their job is limited to only one term.

The only real problem with this scenario is that we really have no say, only the obligation to keep paying for the way it is.

Technorati Tags: