What Congress Bought Itself With Your $1 Billion

[Controlled Chaos]

Best to click the link to read the whole article.

 

What Congress Bought Itself With Your $1 Billion

Updated: 47 minutes ago

AOL News (July 21)

 

 

Food Tab: $604K on Bottled Water

Interns and Pages: $4.4 Million

News and Research: $1.2 Million

Travel: $1.4 Million a Month

 

The Grand Totals $1,013,162,955

The report's tally of congressional spending between June 2009 and March 2010

 

$674 million - What the House spent in the last six months of 2009

$339 million What the House spent in the first three months of 2010»

Edited July 22, 2010 by Controlled Chaos

[jasonxctf]

and we've only spent 100x that amount, each year, for the past 7 years, in Iraq.

[bmags]

pretty vanilla list.

[mr_genius]

and we've only spent 100x that amount, each year, for the past 7 years, in Iraq.

 

we should stop wasting money on frivalous stuff for our corrupt reps.

 

i'm fine with ending all funding for the Iraq war too.

Edited July 22, 2010 by mr_genius

[bmags]

does anyone really have any problem with these:

Interns and Pages: $4.4 Million

News and Research: $1.2 Million

Travel: $1.4 Million a Month

[jasonxctf]

this is all part of the recent extreme narrative in this country...

 

govt spending is out of control and frivilous. we shouldnt spend money on anything. our congress people should be reusing toilet paper to save the 5 cents in tax dollars "of my money" each year. (even though 60% of all people pay very little in taxes and its really not your money)

 

In addition, everyone in this country is overpaid except me. Doctors, Lawyers, Athletes, Politicians, Teachers, etc. Every though I've only got my HS equivilency degree im just as important as a cashier at the local farm store as the superintendent at the local school district.

[southsider2k5]

this is all part of the recent extreme narrative in this country...

 

govt spending is out of control and frivilous. we shouldnt spend money on anything. our congress people should be reusing toilet paper to save the 5 cents in tax dollars "of my money" each year. (even though 60% of all people pay very little in taxes and its really not your money)

 

In addition, everyone in this country is overpaid except me. Doctors, Lawyers, Athletes, Politicians, Teachers, etc. Every though I've only got my HS equivilency degree im just as important as a cashier at the local farm store as the superintendent at the local school district.

 

Thankfully we can punish those evil wage earners into submission and give the money back to you...

[EvilMonkey]

Thankfully we can punish those evil wage earners into submission and give the money back to you...

I thought the narrative was more like "Well, it's ONLY a $xxxx, and that alone won't solve the problem so why worry about it"? Can they cut half that travel expense? If so, then why not do it? And so on for all the departments.

[bmags]

there'll be a lot of s*** if congress people can't get back to their constituents. Some people view that as an important part of our democracy.

[jasonxctf]

I thought the narrative was more like "Well, it's ONLY a $xxxx, and that alone won't solve the problem so why worry about it"? Can they cut half that travel expense? If so, then why not do it? And so on for all the departments.

 

truthfully, i agree in principal. but we are ignoring the large spending problems (military, social security, etc) to focus on the little sh*t. it's a waste of time resources.

 

its like worrying that you left the iron on, while your house is burning to the ground.

[Jenksismyhero]

truthfully, i agree in principal. but we are ignoring the large spending problems (military, social security, etc) to focus on the little sh*t. it's a waste of time resources.

 

its like worrying that you left the iron on, while your house is burning to the ground.

 

*pretends to be Balta*: So you'd agree that the country is in a death spiral due to the massive deficit?

[Balta1701]

A serious point here...

 

Let's hypothetically say we do exactly as the post here would suggest. We cut Congressional expenditures by 50%. Cut back on the number of staff and the quality of staff. Remove every office perk we can find. Replace as many people with unpaid interns as we can. And God help you if you think you're going home to your family in Oregon while we're on recess.

 

We're already in a situation where lobbyists practically run everything anyway. They write bills, they take the best congresspeople and hire them for monster salaries a year after convincing that Congressperson to push through their greatest bill that makes them billions.

 

Is "making Congress's lives harder" really going to be worth the money saved? All you're going to do is lose the few good people you have, whether they're actually in Congress or working on their staffs, because it'll get even harder to afford that life.

 

Conversely...I could make an entirely serious argument that we'd save a crapload of money in the end if we paid Congresspeople 10x as much as we currently do, because they'd have much less need/interest to sell their souls to big Pharma in the 2003 Medicare Drug benefit bill like Billy Tauzin did.

[southsider2k5]

there'll be a lot of s*** if congress people can't get back to their constituents. Some people view that as an important part of our democracy.

 

Big deal. Speaking as a person who gets ahold of his Congress-people on a regular basis for official business type reasons, (for things like radio/web interviews, and for personal issues) they don't get back to people like us anyway. Its not like I would notice a difference.

[bmags]

Big deal. Speaking as a person who gets ahold of his Congress-people on a regular basis for official business type reasons, (for things like radio/web interviews, and for personal issues) they don't get back to people like us anyway. Its not like I would notice a difference.

 

speaking as someone who also does this, and who recently saw a 1 year fight to get my brothers wife her green card resolved in 1 month after contacting Senator Durbin, I disagree.

[lostfan]

speaking as someone who also does this, and who recently saw a 1 year fight to get my brothers wife her green card resolved in 1 month after contacting Senator Durbin, I disagree.

I also had a positive experience getting what I wanted out of Sen. Durbin's office. And in like 2 days.

 

Anyway I was kind of underwhelmed by this list. A lot of those thing I have no problem at all with them spending money on. Ok bottled water, sure (but $600k is like having a nickel fall out of your pocket).

[Balta1701]

Anyway I was kind of underwhelmed by this list. A lot of those thing I have no problem at all with them spending money on. Ok bottled water, sure (but $600k is like having a nickel fall out of your pocket).

I think we need to either start a "Congressional Brita Filter Program" or a "recycle your plastic water bottle" program.

 

Maybe if we did something crazy like put a price on carbon, that would do it...oh, wait...yeah.

[EvilMonkey]

A serious point here...

 

Let's hypothetically say we do exactly as the post here would suggest. We cut Congressional expenditures by 50%. Cut back on the number of staff and the quality of staff. Remove every office perk we can find. Replace as many people with unpaid interns as we can. And God help you if you think you're going home to your family in Oregon while we're on recess.

 

We're already in a situation where lobbyists practically run everything anyway. They write bills, they take the best congresspeople and hire them for monster salaries a year after convincing that Congressperson to push through their greatest bill that makes them billions.

 

Is "making Congress's lives harder" really going to be worth the money saved? All you're going to do is lose the few good people you have, whether they're actually in Congress or working on their staffs, because it'll get even harder to afford that life.

 

Conversely...I could make an entirely serious argument that we'd save a crapload of money in the end if we paid Congresspeople 10x as much as we currently do, because they'd have much less need/interest to sell their souls to big Pharma in the 2003 Medicare Drug benefit bill like Billy Tauzin did.

 

Yes, make congress' lives harder. Maybe then they themselves would actually have to READ a bill before they vote on it. The more time they actually have to spend themselves working on bills, the less time they have for the knee jerk crap that usually comes out of them, or the drivel they make to try and justify themselves being in office.

 

Make campaign contributions and the finances completely transparent and you can cut down on the vote buying. Everything is reported, first violation something severe, not a slap on the wrist like Rangle is gonna get. And nobody said completely cutting out transportation, but do we really need 25 member fact-finding missions to Barbados? YES, there are big expendetures that need to be looked at. Military as well as social programs. But you can't just ignore the small stuff because it is small.

[lostfan]

They are going to have a lot less time to read bills if you cut a bunch of their staffers. Just saying.

[EvilMonkey]

They are going to have a lot less time to read bills if you cut a bunch of their staffers. Just saying.

MAYBE they write and pass a lot less bills? Do we really need every jump ass piece of crap they put up for a vote? Fix some of the rules so things can't get bogged down in committees and such, wasting even more time.

[mr_genius]

Conversely...I could make an entirely serious argument that we'd save a crapload of money in the end if we paid Congresspeople 10x as much as we currently do, because they'd have much less need/interest to sell their souls

 

you are assuming a corrupt politician's greed is not endless. likely, a false assumption.

[mr_genius]

They are going to have a lot less time to read bills if you cut a bunch of their staffers. Just saying.

 

they don't read them anyways.

[mr_genius]

A lot of those thing I have no problem at all with them spending money on

 

there should be a checkbox on your taxes, where you can pay more taxes to pay for that stuff and everyone else is not forced too.

 

Ok bottled water, sure (but $600k is like having a nickel fall out of your pocket).

 

so if I someone refuses to pay 600k in taxes the feds won't care, as it's just a nickel out of their pocket.

Edited July 22, 2010 by mr_genius

[lostfan]

Um no. Aren't you a mathematician? Come on now, that's a silly ass question. Revenue is about 2 trillion (lower than normal b/c of the recession). What percentage of that is $600k?

[kapkomet]

Serious question... can you all understand how the budgets for government entities are done? And why the whole thing is a gigantic sham?

 

[lostfan]

eh, not to be a dick, but I'm not really sure why I bothered posting in this thread because I don't really feel like doing this right now.

Edited July 23, 2010 by lostfan