Recent comments

It is an interesting perspective you have put forth with which to judge Congress, but the simplicity with which you judge obscures recognition of some successes and accomplishments that Congress might well deserve. Depicting the whole Congress as a ‘do nothing’ Congress based purely on the number of days they went to work in the Capitol overlooks a number of realities about the job they do (or are sent to Washington to do). If the number of days at work was an indication of success then anyone working anywhere would be successful based on the number of days they worked, period. Of course we know that some people accomplish more than others in the same time span and not everyone is capable of accomplishing identical work under the same circumstances. So there is a bit of a flaw in your logic: it may not be appropriate to look at Congress’ attendance schedule to determine if it has accomplished anything. They are politicians and have the responsibility of meeting with and reporting to their constituents so the district work period that you seem to question is, if they are doing their job, part of the job. A Representative may have to find a way to report to 500,000 people and may have only fifty miles in one direction or another to travel to those meetings. A fairly awesome task but think about a Senator who has to traverse the whole state to make contacts. One of our Senators in Florida, for example, was in my immediate area twice last spring alone. One visit was a political fundraiser and the other was a boat trip to observe and sample degraded estuary water-a matter he brought up recently in a bill the Senate was considering. Figure his travel time to and from his home office (4 hours) the time at the fundraiser (4 or 5 hours) and the time on the river (3 or 4 hours) along with residual meetings, press questions and speeches and you can see that the Senator picked up a couple of days work addressing problems in this area of the State alone. In the course of a 30 day recess do they all spend every day meeting and greeting? Of course not. They might even slip in a day or two of golf as many people do on their time off. On a purely statistical level you might inform your readers that the Senate in particular can meet for days on end and even weeks but does so such that all of that time is considered one day despite it spanning days or weeks and you might consider as work days time when there is no floor action but plenty of committee action. Finally, considering that they don’t all go home when the legislative business for the day is completed, there are plenty of meetings, fundraisers and other activities in Washington that continue on into the evenings and weekends. Days can run long so the stats you relied on may not take into account the totals of a few 12 or 16 hour days or longer each week adding to the time on the job. My greatest concern with the accuracy of your depiction is that it does not take into account quality and volume of work accomplished. Without digging through pages of statistics and relying on my memory of past Congresses, it has been fairly consistent going back to the 103rd Congress, and perhaps further back, that around 4,000 bills are introduced each year, give or take, and usually 200 to 300 become public law. Now, you could argue that the new laws have no merit and therefore nothing of substance was accomplished but then you would find (in the current political scenario) anywhere from 30% to 70% of the American people disagreeing with you. Finally, I don’t know where you are physically located or have spent time but if you did spend some time on Capitol Hill you might have noticed it is far from a lazy, do-nothing atmosphere. Meet and interview a few legislators and you might see the level of energy they try to maintain. For an outside, authoritative conclusion of Member’s energy level you might want to read the late Meg Greenfield’s book Washington in which she makes a pretty good case from her decades on the Washington Post and dealing with Members, that most who aspire to Capitol Hill are the over-achievers in life, not slackers. Robert McElroy, Publisher TheWeekInCongress.com

...is completely of a piece with the notion of beauty pageants for six-year-olds -- which, when you think of it, are bound to attract pervs.