Paying for the Party

I've been searching the web and cannot find details anywhere on Congressional take home pay. But the GSA payroll calendar shows that paydays are every other Wednesday, and Congressional gross pay is currently $174,000 per year. Divide that by 26 and multiply by .85 and you get a rough take home pay of $5,688.46 every two weeks.

This is what we are paying Congressional Republicans for taking meaningless votes they know they cannot win, over and over again, to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Why do they bring these bills to the floor and vote on them, over and over again? So they can tell the idiots back home who voted for them that they have 'voted to repeal Obamacare'.

$5,688.46 every two weeks. This is what we are paying these people to work 126 days a year. They work no 5 day work weeks, no weekends, and even when Congress is in session, nobody actually makes them show up for work if they don't feel like it on any given day. They can get out of bed whenever they want, they can go home whenever they want, take a break, go to lunch, stay away for as long as they feel like it. They do not get occurrences. They do not have supervisors. Nobody is keeping track of their attendance, much less reviewing their performance.

They essentially keep whatever schedule they want to. They cannot be fired other than by being voted out, and many of them (the worst ones, generally) have 'safe' districts due to gerrymandering.

And when they do actually try to 'work', what they mostly do is talk to each other about Jesus and the need to control women's reproduction and the War on Christmas and the President's birth certificate and how Federal law is repressing the rights of wealthy white Christian CEOs to deny their employees birth control. The only hard work they do is preserving corporate subsidies for the people who will be paying them huge sums as lobbyists when their Congressional terms are over.

Or, they shut down our government. Because... well, for no reason any of them can clearly articulate, apparently. Something to do with them being disrespected. I'd like to disrespect them with a shovel. Or any other reasonably heavy blunt instrument.

$5,688.46 every two weeks. And a free office and a paid staff and taxpayer funded vacations... er, I mean, fact finding junkets... and any number of other privileges we can only dream of. Permanent pensions. Health care. Free parking. Access to official vehicles.

I'm sure some of our Congressional representatives work very hard. My Congressman, John Yarmuth, works his ass off and he donates his salary to charity, too. But he's not one of the worthless Tea Party leeches who is shutting down our government because freeeeeedommmmmmmm!!!!!!, either.

$5,688.46 every two weeks.

Every single one of these people who isn't doing their job, who isn't working to actually help this country get back on its feet, who isn't trying to help American citizens who need it, every single one of these people should be arrested for misappropriation of public monies.

Well, they should actually be arrested for treason, but certainly, someone could make a good solid legal case that they are robbing the Treasury simply by cashing the paychecks they have in no way earned.



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