Why is the Senator at the Fair?
By Leo Brown
I don't expect Congressional Republicans to follow this line of thinking. As usual, they will reflexively disagree with the President as part of their transparent, ethically vacant effort to make him seem ineffectual.
However, since President Obama brought it up, I did a bit of research about the House and Senate vacation schedules. The statistics might make you wonder about this whole operation.
To date this year, the Senate has been in session for 155 calendar days, and the House for 160. What about you? How many days have you worked this year?
Make no mistake: many senators and congressmen work hard. Most of their days "off" are spent traveling to events in their districts, attending fundraisers, and meeting with or calling wealthy donors. Not fun. And I don't mean to suggest that their individual priorities are necessarily warped. The fact is, if they don't adhere to this system, they will lose their jobs in a flash. And they know that their replacements will be faced with the same dilemma, and that the system will remain rotten.
So what needs to happen? How can we get these men and women to spend more time doing what they were hired to do? If I were an employer, and my employees needed to spend half of their time traveling the country campaigning to keep their job, my first instinct would not be to fire them. Rather, I would try to figure out why they find themselves in such a silly predicament. Firing and replacing them would not solve my problem.
To solve our problem, we need to choose between seeing our elected officials at the county fair or at their office in the Capitol. Certainly, there is much to be gained by a Congresswoman or Senator shaking the hand of a child who might then be inspired to become an engaged citizen. But for everything, there is an opportunity cost. And maybe that same child would be equally inspired by a government that works together, as a team, to provide dignified, compassionate domestic policy, including quality education and health care.
Such cooperation will not be possible until elected officials are hauled back to Washington. Only then will they be able to hear each other's voices over the din of media and campaign bluster. Ultimately, this change will only be brought about through popular demand and action by Congress itself: legislation dictating the amount of time one may spend at events and fundraisers. But President Obama would certainly have nothing to lose by bringing up the idea. Congressional approval ratings have sat at around 12% since September, so this might be his best opportunity to capitalize on the public's frustration and bring about significant change to the dysfunctional system.
After all, isn't that why we elected him?
Funny how during times of financial distress, excess in all forms becomes obvious, to the honest and fair minded.
ReplyDeleteRight on!
ReplyDeleteIf I were in charge (and no one with this plan would be likely to be elected by his/her colleagues as senate majority leader, for instance), there would be ACTUAL BUSINESS on the floors of the two congressional chambers instead of people reading speeches written by their interns. Oh yeah, and everyone would have to be there. No running around doing other things. Committees would meet in the morning and floor business would happen in the afternoon. You'd need to raise your hand to go to the bathroom. People's patience for gamesmanship or for cheap grandstanding would dwindle when you would have to sit there and endure it. You couldn't get away with pronouncing platitudes endlessly because your colleagues would be sitting there watching you insult their intelligence. Many people would talk much less. People who couldn't argue effectively or be willing to change their minds in public would suddenly become useless.
Jacob, welcome back!!
ReplyDeleteI hope someday you are in charge. I think this idea would work brilliantly. As an aside, interns don't write speeches (at least no one ever asked me to) - there are other staff who actually get paid to do that!