It is amazing what some politicians will do in the middle of a financial crisis. One congressman from Florida has taken it upon himself to make it just a bit worse. According to The New York Times, Representative John L. Mica (R-Fla.) has been working quite diligently on the SunRail “a 61-mile commuter rail project that the federal government ranks as one of the least cost-effective mass transit efforts in the nation.” With spending $1.2 billion in taxpayer’s money on the project one would hope that, at the very least, there would be projections of heavy ridership. Unfortunately, the rail line is only projected to serve roughly 2,150 commuters per day when operations begin in 2014. It appears that Rep. Mica is planning to use federal and state tax dollars to pick up the tap for a billion dollar project that only a couple thousand people will use.

If the debate leading up to the debt ceiling deadline has told taxpayers anything, it is that Congress likes to wait until the last minute to do anything and they act like martyrs when they cancel part of their summer vacation. The American public is not being fooled. In a national Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, only 8 percent of likely U.S. voters think Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Fifty-two percent rate Congress' performance as poor. To make matters worse, the same group of elected officials who have trouble coming to a consensus to save the country from economic Armageddon make a healthy living at taxpayers’ expense. A new report by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance and Our Generation details the generous compensation for members of Congress, who receive a salary of $174,000 per year, as well as generous fringe benefits that boost their total compensation to $285,000 per year (read full report here).