These Fat Cats Have a Full Plate

Jason Embry wrote a an article (http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/news/CONGRESS_HOME14_AUS.html) on the 18 of January in the Austin American-Statesman about Congress easing back on the work hours for the coming year. Apparently, last year the newly Dem. House wanted to prove a work-horse ethic above and beyond that of the Republican House years previously and scheduled a voting work week of five days. Now their pen hands are getting tired and so they are backing off again. When the Republicans ran things, they were voting Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but even backing the schedule off a little the Democrats are still having everyone report in from Tuesday to Friday, or Monday to Thursday.

So let's think about this a little bit. Most of us look at the branches of government as either some kind of legislative factory, or as Club Fat Cat, either as a machine, or as a place for WASPs to vote raises for themselves. Admit it - that's what you think about our government, isn't it! Well, me too, so this article was good for me to read.

Here's the question: what is a legislator's job? To vote on legislation, right? To represent their state while they do it. OK, there's the problem: where do they live? Their state, for example, Texas. Where do they work? Well, Texas, where they have their office, where they talk to their constituency, where they gather info on what their voters want, where they campaign, where they give speeches to convince people of legislation they feel would be good for the voters. Where do they also work? Washington D.C., where they vote, scheme and speak at the House or Senate. Where they sit on committee and sub-committee meetings and listen to experts talk about this or that on the national level. Where they filibuster, or get filibustered and sit for hours and hours. That means two plane trips a week on most weeks...or more. If they are in Washington four out of five work days and most state and civic organizations they have to talk to at home are only open Monday through Friday, they only have one day to tend to everything back on the home front. And during an election year, this would be all the more hectic.

These are important things to think of as we pass our condemnations or unreasonable expectations along to a bunch of overworked, frantic legislators who are trying to remember the names of their children, who they see a couple times a week. This can at least give a feeling and an idea of the human fallibility of the system and why it sometimes seems that nothing gets done.