By Staff
In the 1960s and '70s, Congress met an average of 162 days a year. That fell to 139 days a year in the '80s and '90s. This year, the second session of the 109th Congress, one of its few accomplishments will be setting a new record for least days worked, 93. Not a bad gig – three months for $165,000.
There must be some perks because there's never a shortage of people clamoring to spend millions to land the job.
The infamous 1948 "Do-Nothing Congress" toiled 252 days between the House and Senate – compared to the current 218 days. And a lot of those "days" are shams with a work week arranged to start late on Tuesday and end by early afternoon Thursday for four-day weekends.
If you think Congress represents the American people, know that issues of concern routinely languish without resolution – health care, education, immigration, Iraq, Social Security – while plenty of attention is lavished on items bringing up the rear on America's worry list, like gay marriage and the inheritance tax.
A Fox News poll found that 53 percent of Americans concluded Congress isn't "working on issues important to most Americans."
This is where the Republican revolution resides after six years of George W. Bush and his cronies.
The GOP abdicates oversight responsibilities the Constitution mandates and portrays itself as conservative while presiding over unrestrained spending and reckless borrowing (we owe China $300 billion).
These brazen politicians are running on this record and the American public is poised to reward people who aren't very good at their jobs with new terms.
The most egregious example is Rep. Bill Jefferson, the bribe-taking Louisiana Democrat.
In May, after Jefferson was caught accepting $100,000 in bribes, the FBI raided his office.
In a rare show of bipartisanship, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and House Speaker Dennis Hastert denounced the "unconstitutional" raid.
Jefferson also commandeered a Coast Guard helicopter to make sure his personal effects were recovered from his New Orleans home. Yup, he's a shoo-in for re-election.
Bill Clinton left office with a $236 billion surplus. Congress is now presiding over a $296 billion budget deficit. America borrows more than 65 percent of all world loans. It took 42 presidents before Bush to borrow $1 trillion. Congress has more than doubled that in six short years. Imagine what we could do for struggling Americans with the $77 billion we shell out each year in just interest to foreign creditors.
Congress excels at inserting pork-laden earmarks, passing 6,073 in 2000 and 15,877 in 2005.
Even our lawmakers seem embarrassed by their performance, bringing 20 bills to a vote between midnight and 7 a.m.
In every year of the Bush White House, Congress failed to pass more than three of the 11 annual appropriations bills on time.
Congress is like a student who puts off his paper until the night before deadline, except lawmakers roll their undone homework into bulging Omnibus bills they shove through at the 11th hour.
Imagine, 8/11ths of federal spending crammed into one piece of legislation that arrives with hours to read. It's a safe bet the fine print escapes scrutiny until the devilish details are brought out after the fact.
Republicans issued more than 1,000 subpoenas looking into alleged Democratic misconduct while reviewing more than 2 million pages of government documents in the Clinton years.
Counting independent counsels, it's estimated the GOP spent more than $150 million investigating the Clinton administration.
It cost $2.2 million just to investigate former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, yet the 109th Congress spent barely $500,000 examining government bungling and fraud in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
So, thanks to the lack of congressional oversight, we likely will never get to the bottom of the manipulation of intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees, the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA status, the award of Halliburton contracts, Dick Cheney's infamous energy task force, the administration's politicization of science, Homeland Security contract abuses, EPA lobbyist influence or secret NSA wiretaps.
That doesn't mean there was nothing to find.