It’s the middle of the work week. Do you know where your members of Congress are? Well, they ain’t in Washington, D.C., that’s for sure, and most of ‘em haven’t been there since last Thursday when they hightailed it out of town like the British were coming. It’s amazing how the Congressional folks get more days off than school kids. This week they are all out on recess; just like the school kids, except they’re still getting paid that $175,000 a year salary.
In this latest vacation, the Democrats decided that they didn’t want anything to do with trying to come up with a deal to keep the United States government operating or even just catching up on a little work they could be doing around the capitol. Nope, so, they arranged for another government shutdown. They rang the bell, and it looked like somebody hollered “free pizza” in the lunchroom, and off they go on a ten-day holiday. It’s truly amazing how these dedicated public servants can grab a seat on the first thing smoking at the airport or the bus station or Amtrak and hot foot it out of town when they hear that magic “R” word. The only thing members of Congress are better at than spending money is finding a first-class seat on Delta for $49.95. Usually when they go off on “fact finding” trips, they get their own government airplane. It might not be Air Force 1, but it could be Air Force 3 or 4 and that’s still pretty nice. This past weekend, 11 Senators and House Members flew to the Munich Security Conference. Among them was Mrs. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Now if you can explain to me what Mrs. Cortez knows about international security, and why she needed to be in Munich, Germany, I will explain to you the speed-reading version of quantum physics. I freely admit there were both Democrats and Republicans on the trip enjoying the German countryside; exactly two Republicans and nine Democrats. How’s that for bipartisanship?
Now, I would also agree that some trips out in the world are necessary for politicians. But let’s be honest. A lot of these trips are pure fun and frolic. They call these jaunts CODEC “Congressional Delegations”, and very often the spouses are also allowed to go along. As you can imagine, they are quite expensive, and often times we see them occurring right around election years, and who do you think gets to pay for them? I guess I wouldn’t be so hard on these folks if they showed a little more interest in what’s best for this country and less interest in trying to shout each other down in front of the TV cameras. Whether it’s Democrats or Republicans, all it takes for me is about 30 minutes of watching what goes on in committee hearings, and I am ready to send most of these over-aged “behavior problems” to the principal’s office. And as far as their traveling arrangements, I think that could be handled very well with a few big, long yellow vehicles with caution lights on top and a stop sign that flies off the side. That could round all of them up, and they could shout and fuss with each other all the way back to Washington!
