Time Off With Pay and Privileges
Dear editor:
What would happen if you walked into your boss’s office and told him that you were going to take off the next two years from work to look for a new and better job? Of course you expect him to continue paying your full salary, to keep making payments into your non-contributory retirement plan, to make sure you do not lose your 100% employer paid health insurance plan, maintain all of your seniority rights within the company, and if you don’t find a better job your old one within the company would be waiting for you. Of course you would check in every month or so to keep a handle on things. And by the way, you want him to supply a 24/7 security detail to protect you during this two year quest. What would happen? You would be fired on the spot and it would take your boss about a month to stop laughing at those ridiculous demands.
An impossible scenario you say? Not if you are a U.S. Senator running for the presidency of our country. They do it all the time, we foolishly pay for it, and party affiliation has absolutely nothing to do with it. For them, the “Cardinals of Capitol Hill,” members of “the most exclusive club in the country,” it is a right of office that we, their absentee bosses, have allowed them. They do this with their “base pay” of $169,300 a year.
Observe the current and continuing campaigns of the Senators from Arizona, New York and Illinois. One would think that they were elected to office to run for office. Forget about the fact that the electorate of their respective states expected them to represent them in Washington and do what is best for the country. Instead they took off about a year ago, criss-crossing the country, giving speech after speech, kissing babies, making promises that they have no intention of keeping (if elected), and attacking each other. They have missed no telling how many roll calls, committee meetings, votes, meetings with constituents, drafting legislation (unless done by lobbyists) and just generally doing the nation’s business that they were elected to do. True, their staffs back in D.C. continue to take care of things, but they aren’t the “war hero,” the “most experienced” due to living in the White House for eight years, or the man who will bring about “change.”
And we, the American taxpayer, keep footing the bill. Surely Senators and Congressmen aren’t going to cut their own throats by passing a law that withholds pay on a daily basis for time spent campaigning. Of course not. They like this free time and tax money that we foolishly continue to give them. I guess we deserve what we get. Maybe we should change the Preamble to the Constitution that starts out, “We the people,” and make it “Them the elected.” President Lincoln must be turning over in his grave thinking of his words “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
What would happen if you walked into your boss’s office and told him that you were going to take off the next two years from work to look for a new and better job? Of course you expect him to continue paying your full salary, to keep making payments into your non-contributory retirement plan, to make sure you do not lose your 100% employer paid health insurance plan, maintain all of your seniority rights within the company, and if you don’t find a better job your old one within the company would be waiting for you. Of course you would check in every month or so to keep a handle on things. And by the way, you want him to supply a 24/7 security detail to protect you during this two year quest. What would happen? You would be fired on the spot and it would take your boss about a month to stop laughing at those ridiculous demands.
An impossible scenario you say? Not if you are a U.S. Senator running for the presidency of our country. They do it all the time, we foolishly pay for it, and party affiliation has absolutely nothing to do with it. For them, the “Cardinals of Capitol Hill,” members of “the most exclusive club in the country,” it is a right of office that we, their absentee bosses, have allowed them. They do this with their “base pay” of $169,300 a year.
Observe the current and continuing campaigns of the Senators from Arizona, New York and Illinois. One would think that they were elected to office to run for office. Forget about the fact that the electorate of their respective states expected them to represent them in Washington and do what is best for the country. Instead they took off about a year ago, criss-crossing the country, giving speech after speech, kissing babies, making promises that they have no intention of keeping (if elected), and attacking each other. They have missed no telling how many roll calls, committee meetings, votes, meetings with constituents, drafting legislation (unless done by lobbyists) and just generally doing the nation’s business that they were elected to do. True, their staffs back in D.C. continue to take care of things, but they aren’t the “war hero,” the “most experienced” due to living in the White House for eight years, or the man who will bring about “change.”
And we, the American taxpayer, keep footing the bill. Surely Senators and Congressmen aren’t going to cut their own throats by passing a law that withholds pay on a daily basis for time spent campaigning. Of course not. They like this free time and tax money that we foolishly continue to give them. I guess we deserve what we get. Maybe we should change the Preamble to the Constitution that starts out, “We the people,” and make it “Them the elected.” President Lincoln must be turning over in his grave thinking of his words “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
posted by Sam Schoolsky | 6:15 AM
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