There’s been a lot of fuss over whether or not congressmen should be sending Merry Christmas messages. The debate has missed the point. It’s not about keeping Christ in Christmas, something of which I wholeheartedly approve, but about how Congresscritters spend your money (or the money they’ve borrowed for you children to pay back). Rep. Jeff Flake really hits the nail on the head in this article in the Wall Street Journal today:
Members of Congress can, of course, extend any holiday wishes they desire on a personal basis: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Kwanzaa or even, with a nod to George Costanza, Happy Festivus. Members of Congress just can’t use taxpayer dollars to send these season’s greetings if extending such greetings “is the primary purpose of the communication.”
This is a good thing. Do you really need to pay for Congressman X’s awkward family photo featuring a dozen grandchildren and the family dog in matching sweaters with the U.S. Capitol photoshopped into the background?
As Representative Flake explains, they do this all year round. That Facebook ad for my useless representative Gerry Connolley that appears every time I load up the page? I’m paying for it!
It’s not just our federal “public servants” ripping us off for their own benefit, of course. Local government officials are equally adept. A quick look around the local D.C. press always finds plenty of stories about the everyday abuse of the taxpayer by those who are supposed to be working for us. Here are two examples from today. In the first, a member of the Maryland governor’s redistricting committee has been found guilty of $4 million worth of tax evasion. In the second, also in Maryland, an audit found that 61 state employees who had been “terminated with prejudice” by the state Department of Transportation had been hired by other state agencies. These stories are regrettably typical. And yet we still can’t cut public spending in real terms.
So if there’s anyone you know still in denial about the outrageous state of our so-called public services, or who wants to know more about the abuse that government officials perpetrate in our name and to their benefit, I have a perfect last-minute gift for them: Stealing You Blind: How Government Fatcats Are Getting Rich Off of You.
"It’s not about keeping Christ in Christmas, something of which I wholeheartedly approve, but about how Congresscritters spend your money...."
Except that the two are related: It's not the role of Congresscritters to try to keep the Christ in Christmas. They can do that on their own time and with their own money, if that's what they want to do, but it is not what we elect them for and they should not be spending our money on it. I entirely agree with Flake on this one.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSolution to congress spending money on themselves whether it is salary, health care, pension, travel, housing, sending out lame Xmas cards with their smiling mugs on them, is to pass legislation (yea right) that no money is authorized for any of it. The states can pay for each of their reps or senators. That way they answer to the people who voted them in office. If you're from Maryland it might be comparatively cheap for the cost, and if you're from California it might be more expensive. Either way, the congressman is beholden to their own state for their 3 squares a day.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFlake is either ill-informed or being disingenuous here. Congressmen get a set budget that covers "ads" and mailers (as well as everything else) at the beginning of the year. They don't just "charge the taxpayers more money" every time they want to take out space on Facebook or send you a Christmas card. Members' office allowances have been reduced by large amounts every year for the last few years, so if you don't like the fact that you're seeing their faces in ad-space, then you'll be happy to know they have less money to use to pay for such things.
Rep. Flake is just trying to score political points with a public too lazy to inform themselves about Congress and what goes on in the Capitol. Perhaps if they were curious about our government and less willing to make scapegoats of their elected representatives, Congressmen could stop sending out the mailers they find to be such a waste.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn Patterson NJ, they expanded parking meters to many commercial streets outside the center of town over the summer. Now parking meters are usually warranted to keep residents from hogging all the spots in front of business, and thus giving the businesses ample spots for their customers. This was wholly unnecessary in the streets they chose to inflict over the summer, and I am aware of no businessmen requesting meters.
Well, this December they decided to cover the meters with plastic socks giving back free parking for the holiday shopping season. So I guess this is an admission that they were not helpful to business? Best of all, they are printed with the mayor's name so we know who to thank for this gift of free holiday parking. I wonder what all these custom covers cost?
It's the same idea as raising property taxes so they can send out rebate checks in late October. Bah, I say cut off their jingle bells.
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