Earlier in the week the DoNothing congress went home to celebrate Christmas with their families, perhaps to gift-wrap the guns they’ll use for next year’s holiday photo.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the annual salary for a member of Congress is $174,000. Think about that. The gentle woman from Georgia was paid $174,000 to do nothing but disrupt. The same for many of her GOP co-workers. While the majority of Americans work long hard hours— some juggling two or three jobs to offset the cost of holiday cheer— members of Congress get paid a base salary of $174 000 dollars to literally do nothing. In addition, they take off a week or two for the holidays and the whole month of August when summer comes.
It pains me to think of this. The DoNothings left Washington a week before the holiday and won’t return until the new year. While I’m not usually such a Scrooge, so many Americans work to the last minute or are forced to shuffle hours in order to be home for Christmas dinner.
Meanwhile, the unfinished business of Congress languishes in the empty chambers. A full week before Christmas, members of congress fa-la-la’d out of Washington while drones continue to fly over Kiev, while the children in the Middle east cower in tunnels or ransaked kibutzim, and here at home, we look forward to kicking off the new year beneath a looming government shudown.
The GOP talks about the mass of people at the border as if they were sewage flotsam. Then they pack their bags and go home to celebrate the birth of a child whose own family was forced to flee to Egypt. Everyone agrees we need immigration reform. We also need compassion. All Washington’s unfinished business required was engaging in serious, non-partisan compromise and perhaps, this year, staying overtime.
What is most disheartening is that the new majority leader as well those gentle people in the slim- margined GOP actually seem proud of their DoNothingness, of their cruel, self-satisfied dismissal of the suffering innocents. It’s pretty obvious that the GOP isn’t interested in helping to shape a more just world. If they were, humanity might have a better chance of peace on earth.
