The United States Congress, with 100 senators and 435 congressmen, is the most exclusive and expensive club in the world. And for decades it has proven be the inept.
It is a club that costs taxpayers nearly $5 billion a year to maintain, or about $100 million per member of Congress. Each do-nothing congressman and senator draws a salary of $174,000 a year for working about three days a week, in a busy week. Not too shabby for a part-time job. But the salary is inconsequential in the overall picture of the cost of running Congress.
Perks is where the money goes. And, oh my, do they ever have perks. From travel expenses, which can include their spouses and staff, to vast office space, huge staffs, mailing privileges, a subsidized gym and restaurant, free parking spaces at the Capitol and at D.C. airports, free printing, cut-rate federal health care insurance (including family members), free outpatient care from military hospitals, a pension plan (80 percent of it paid by taxpayers) that is far more generous than the Social Security we mere mortals receive or that private companies can afford to offer, a special tax deduction for maintaining a second residence, and much more.
Do all these sweet entitlements, envied by America’s corporate world and working stiffs alike, prompt members of Congress to work hard for the money? Far from it. They don’t do much work, except for those rare days when they go to the House or Senate floor to obstruct any bill that would benefit the public.
OK, they also give a few speeches at local senior centers, kiss babies and make promises to their constituents that they don’t intend to keep. Campaigning is the only hard work they do. But they campaign not to help us slobs but to keep their perk-rich sweetheart jobs.
And I suppose they do have a few pastimes—for example, cozying up with lobbyists, fundraising and traveling on the public’s dime, typically to exotic and warm locations during the winter months. Fundraising is a barrel of fun and very profitable, so lawmakers are willing to spend endless months doing it. They get tons of money–“campaign contributions,” they call this windfall–from their friendly lobbyists while boozing it up and gorging themselves on some unpronounceable dishes at fancy restaurants.
Not a bad life.
The real work of government is done by the army of aides that each member of Congress is entitled to have (in their own estimation), both in Washington, D.C., and in their home districts or states.
One of the finest Congressional perks is the free travel abroad that politicians disguise as “fact-finding missions,” also known as a paid vacation, with expenses covered by Joe Taxpayer or some sucker of a foreign government or interest group. According to the Congressional Record, overseas travel for senators and their staff will exceed $5 million this year. But that is not the whole story on the travel costs. Tens of millions of dollars are also spent on military air transportation to members of Congress, their spouses and staff while on many of these trips.
So let’s review: Members of Congress love to party, they get free expenses-paid vacation, they grab freebies whenever the law the allows (or doesn’t), they work part-time, and they hide from the public and the press–except when they crave exposure while campaigning to hold their job.
They can hide more easily now, thanks to a new perk. For years, a chosen few Senators had secret hideaway offices in the Capitol Building, in addition to their palatial regular digs. This perk has now been extended to all Senators, allowing them to disappear whenever they feel like–which it is most of the time. So add the maintenance costs of nearly 100 additional offices to the budget. Envious House members surely will soon be lobbying for their own secret getaways—or nap rooms.
Perhaps you can now begin to see where the $100 million per member of Congress is spent, doled out to finance elected officials who cost America so much but contribute so little.
Of course, in a cynical twist, most of them have the gall to run for office on a platform of budget cuts and austerity. Well, austerity must begin at home. And this is where I propose that we start cutting the fat.
Let’s downsize Club Congress to make it even more exclusive. Let’s cut the membership in half. Fifty senators and 217 congressmen seem like more than enough. This alone will save taxpayers $2.5 billion a year.
As an added bonus, there will be fewer members of Congress to waste money on earmarks, those pork-barrel pet projects that lawmakers bring home to their states. According to Citizens Against Government, Congress spent $19 billion on pork last year. Cut that in half along with Congress, and we save additional $9.5 billion.
Some of you may be feeling bad that these “public servants” might be unemployed. Don’t bother. More than half of all U.S. senators are millionaires, and four more fall less than 10 percent short of that status, according to a recent Roll Call analysis. The survey, based on a review of 2010 Senate financial disclosure forms, also indicated that the majority of senators somehow managed to grow their fortunes during the past year, while so much of America shriveled financially.
My austerity program will be easy to implement. We give the pink slip to half of the members of Congress by flipping a coin. It will cost a quarter per state. Yes, let’s use those marvelous coins commemorating each state to do the job. It will be cheap, quick and painless.
And voila, with a flip of 50 coins we start saving $12 billion a year. And while we’re at it, we can do the same with state legislatures, county boards and city councils. In New York, we can reduce the membership in State Assembly and Senate from current 212 to 106. And then on to New York City, to Buffalo, and on and on, all the way to Los Angeles. In no time at all, we can save untold billions for the cost of a coin flip.
But wait: There is more. The government can raise wads of cash by auctioning those coins. Sarah and the Tea party will pay big money for the coin that is used to get rid of, say, Schumer, Reid or Pelosi.
The concept is priceless, the possibilities endless.
By Carlos Vélez, columnist of QueensLatino
You can contact Carlos Vélez at Veljia47@yahoo.com