Political Disaster -- Members of Congress Expected to Spend 5 Hours a Day Begging for Money

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/political-disaster-members-congress-expected-spend-5-hours-day-begging-money

Members of Congress don’t know anything about “the issues” and they spend all their time fundraising, according to both a new Huffington Post story and “an easy inference to make after observing Congress for almost any length of time.”

The HuffPo’s Ryan Grim and Sabrina Siddiqui obtained a PowerPoint presentation given to incoming Democratic freshmen legislators by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the DCCC’s recommended schedule for House members includes four hours spent on the phone begging rich people for money and one hour spent begging rich person for money in person. This is the daily schedule.

As Kevin Drum notes, this leaves no time for studying or homework. Members rarely know much about anything, policy-wise. An unnamed member confirmed to HuffPo that these guys basically are exactly as ill-informed as you feared:

One member of Congress said that the fundraising takes up so much time that members don’t even have time to become experts on bills they sponsor. “One thing that’s always been striking to me is even the members playing a leading role on specific issues actually could not talk about the issues,” said the member, who didn’t want to be quoted by name. “They didn’t have enough knowledge on their own issues to talk about them at length. I’m probably guilty of that.” He recalled one meeting early in his career, where he brought several members together to try to hash out a compromise, just as he had done earlier as a state legislator.

[Le Taz Hot]

1. They could change that at any time.

It's hard to muster up any sympathy here.

[Fumesucker]

2. The bestest politicians money can buy

Or rent as the case may be.

[Selatius]

3. This is what proto-fascism looks like. Government by private interest is killing the United States.

The people with the money have such outsized influence over the legislating process that few progressive or pro-labor bills could get passed, and if they do get passed, there is definitely a price to be paid by the common man.

There can be no good outcome on this road except tyranny for the American people. This isn't how a Republic should be run. It's, instead, an example of collusion between government power and corporate interest. You cannot have government of the people if the only people being heard are the oligarchs on Wall Street with the biggest rolls of cash.

[malaise]

4. They make choices

They are owned

[cali]

5. This is the kind of crap that makes me glad to be from Vermont

and yes, I KNOW that my rep Peter Welch is well informed on issues.

[PETRUS]

6. K&R

[Jake2413]

7. And yet they have the ability to fix it but don't...

go figure