A citizen’s open letter to Congress

Congress wants a raise. 

Let us for a moment put a pin in the fact that the average approval rating of Congress in 2013-2014 was a pitiful 14.5 percent, according to a Gallup poll conducted at the end of 2014. And many of us still remember the 16 days in October 2013 when the government was shut down courtesy of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and co. And of course, having passed a mere 234 bills, the 113th congress was the LEAST. PRODUCTIVE. CONGRESS. EVER.

{mosads}Now I am no politician, nor am I a pundit, political correspondent, lawyer, glad-hander, baby-kisser, inspiring orator or community organizer. I am just an American citizen, who was raised in a society where we were promised that if we worked hard, put our minds to it, displayed dedication and loyalty and the willingness to go the extra mile, we would surely be rewarded. In the words of the great American songwriter Billy Joel, “Every child had a pretty good shot/ to get at least as far as their old man got.”  I was also made to believe that if you did NOT work hard, were NOT dedicated, loyal and honest, and did NOT go the extra mile and instead played it safe and waited for others to take the lead (and the responsibility), that you would NOT be reaping the rewards of that which you did NOT help sow. 

Man, was I naive. 

To put it frankly, if my job performance were as poor as that of Congress, I would be getting no raise. I would be fired. This is a Congress that has passed one bad budget after another, spending six times as much on “defense” as it did on education in 2014. This is a Congress that has allowed sickening austerity, refusing to stand up to corporate interests, special interests and Wall Street, opting instead to continue cutting funds to healthcare, education, social security, and other programs that provide much needed help to the worst-off among us. This is a Congress that allowed a $700 billion bailout to go to the very institutions that betrayed Americans by lending to those they knew could not afford to pay, bundling our mortgages into “securities” and using our debt to speculate on the stock market. And what did we get for our $700 billion? More of the same. 

However, even if Congress were not to blame, even if they are hard-working people who generally have the best interest of the people at heart (stop laughing), could we really afford to give them a raise? 

“Members deserve to be paid, staff deserves to be paid and the cost of living here is causing serious problems for people who are not wealthy to serve in this institution,” said Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) during a Monday Rules Committee hearing on the upcoming year’s legislative branch appropriations bill.

Members of Congress are paid $174,000 annually, and haven’t enjoyed a pay raise since 2009. Those poor, poor souls. How do they ever get by? 

Here are a few facts for Hastings:

The average annual income for American households in 2012 was $51,000 according to the census bureau

According to the 2013 Economic Policy Institute, the average American cost-of-living is $58,627, making for an annual household deficit of over $7000. 

This defect, combined with unforeseen expenses (health emergencies, automotive repairs) have driven the average American household’s credit card debt to $15,609.

This is in addition to the average mortgage of $156,700, and the average student loan debt of $32,956. (This last point is particularly interesting, since Hastings pointed out that members of Congress feel “that on the salary that they make, they’re going to be unable to send their children to college”.

1.46 million American households are living in poverty.

American debt totals $11.91 trillion, an obscene figure we all know will never be paid. 

Millions of Americans cannot find work thanks to Congress allowing the wealthiest 1 percent to hoard that wealth by lowering their tax rates, keeping that money from circulation, despite almost four decades of promises that these are the “job creators” and that the wealth will “trickle down”. 

1 in 7 Americans are illiterate thanks to congressional budget cuts to public education. These same politicians then have the nerve to attack teachers – people who basically raise our children while those of us who do work are spending more than 50 hours a week on average working jobs we hate just so that we can live – and call them “thugs.”

The U.S. is trillions in debt, in no small part because of the congressionally sanctioned Iraq war, which an overwhelming majority of Americans did not support. Add to this $51 billion annually for the war on drugs, which has failed basically everyone who does not own a prison, and the untold billions in tax revenue the federal government could be collecting on the sale of recreational marijuana- a substance which remains illegal in most states despite the majority of Americans supporting legalization. 

The cost of living in the U.S. has risen 67 percent since 1990, while wages have grown less than 20 percent, despite productivity increasing by over 60 percent in that time, due to those Americans who are employed working harder than ever. 

And  Congress wants a raise? As a tax-paying shareholder in America Inc., I am going to have to vote NO. Do I have a second?

Richmond is a machinist and a musician from Cleveland, Ohio.