Congress Complains and Taxpayers Pay the Price

As Congress prepares to embark on another recess (they just had one for President’s holiday), Politico reports that the thrill is gone for many lawmakers.  According to Politico, “They don’t make national policy anymore. They can’t earmark money for communities back home. The public hates them. And perks little and big, from private jet travel to a little free nosh now and then, have been locked down by ethics rules.  As they head for the exits this year, many leaving Congress say the prestigious job of being a congressman sucks now, and that’s why lawmakers young and old are trading in their member pins for a new life in the private sector.”  The truth is that they choose not to make national policy, earmarks aren’t really gone and there are still perks associated with being a member of Congress.  The only accurate part of the sentiment is that the public does hate them, as evidenced by a 10 percent favorable rating.

Taxpayers have very little sympathy with congressional pay considering that each rank and file member of Congress makes $174,000 per year or $285,000 per year when benefits are included (see joint report by Our Generation and TPA report here).  With the average full-time employee in the United States earning $50,875 annually, Members of Congress make 3.4 times more than the average American.

National Policy

Congress is in the middle of debating a national transportation bill that will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to address everything from airports to highway funding.  They also passed a payroll tax cut and are responsible for passing a budget to fund the federal government.  Well, they should pass a budget doesn’t mean that they have passed a budget considering that it has been more than 1,000 days since the Senate passed a budget.

One of the biggest policy areas is the national debt and last year Congress had three opportunities to cut spending.

In April, there was a golden opportunity to cut spending with the impending government shutdown.   Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader (D-Nevada) reached an agreement at the proverbial 11th hour to avoid a shutdown and boasted that the deal would cut $78 billion.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) threw cold water on their party when they estimated on May 16, 2011 that “Total discretionary outlays in 2011 will be $3.2 billion higher as a result of the legislation, CBO estimates—an increase of $7.5 billion for defense programs, partially offset by a net reduction of $4.4 billion in other spending.”

As part of the August 2, 2011 deal to raise the debt ceiling, the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction (aka the “Super Committee”) was created to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction.  This is in addition to an initial $1 trillion in spending cuts that was instituted immediately after the deal was signed.  This agreement once again came at the 11th hour as Congress and the President warned the country that if a deal wasn’t passed that the country’s credit rating would be downgraded.  The deal was passed and the downgrade happened anyway.  The first round of spending cuts were nothing more than window dressing.  Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute warned of fake spending cuts in the deal to raise the debt ceiling in an August 1, 2011 blog posting, “The ‘cuts’ in the deal are only cuts from the CBO ‘baseline,’ which is a Washington construct of ever-rising spending. And even these ‘cuts’ from the baseline include $156 billion of interest savings, which are imaginary because the underlying cuts are imaginary.  No program or agency terminations are identified in the deal. None of the vast armada of federal subsidies are targeted for elimination.”  And, to add insult onto injury, the Super Committee declared failure and disbanded just before Thanksgiving.

Any failure on national policy formulation is their own fault and dysfunction.

Earmarks

When Congress passed the multi-thousand-page Omnibus spending bill right before their Christmas vacation, they forgot to tell taxpayers about the earmarks hidden in the bill. TPA uncovered 89 earmarks worth $3 billion in the Defense section of the bill (click here to see the full list) despite the insistence of both political parties that that the bill was free of earmarks and the claim that Congress stuck to their self-imposed ban on earmarks.  Government watchdogs and taxpayers had very little opportunity to scrutinize the spending bill since it was released early Thursday (12/15) morning and voted on Friday (12/16) afternoon.  The initial links to the legislation only contained legislative language and not report details.  The release of the conference report details occurred after votes by the House and the Senate.  This was a shameful lack of transparency and fiscal responsibility.

Perks

In addition the aforementioned $285,000 salary + benefits, Members of Congress enjoy some very favorable perks such as gym memberships and free parking, and others.  It is not a struggle to be a member of Congress.

It is crazy to think that some of the best paid people in the country, Congress, would complain about their pay and job conditions.  Any member of Congress who is not happy with their job should quit immediately and let somebody who does care take the job.