We Work Harder; Congress Barely Shows Up
From the American Prospect(thanks to The Hamster for the link):
With the House and Senate shut down on Friday for the funeral of former President Ronald Reagan, lawmakers lost yet more time on the expiring congressional calendar...Wow, five days a week! Maybe even for a few hours each of those days? And they make a king's ransom, between the $150K base salary and all those special treats and perks and speaking engagements and... and... and...
This shrinking legislative window wouldn’t be as much of a problem if Congress hadn’t been inactive for so much of this year. As House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer noted last month, House members have worked “bankers’ hours” in 2004; they may put in less face time than in 1998, when representatives reported for work in the nation’s capital just 119 times. (That’s one out of every three days for a year.) It would be merely ironic that lawmakers might spend more time this year trying to hold onto their jobs than actually doing those jobs, if so much important legislation -- the budget for fiscal year 2005 and the six-year transportation reauthorization bill, among other things -- were not sitting idle.
“Republicans have made it clear that ‘doing nothing’ is their campaign strategy,” Hoyer said. “Republican leaders have publicly stated that they don’t intend to do much this year, and plan to coast until the November election.”
But as the clock winds down on the 108th Congress, GOP leaders may be deciding it’s time to get serious. A Republican House staffer told Roll Call this month that lawmakers could soon be working -- gasp! -- “perhaps five-day weeks.” Senators may even have to come back to work after the White House’s congressional barbecue on Tuesday night, the newspaper reported.
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