I am rapidly losing faith in our elected officials! What is wrong with them? In the same week, they vote down a public option for health care reform and they pass a bill that would bestow an increase in funding for both houses of Congress of $99 million. I’m outraged!

At a time when their constituents have seen job losses, home foreclosures, real estate values plummet, outrageous increases in health insurance premiums, loss and/or denials of coverage and the values of their 401k savings accounts plummet, Congress has the audacity to increase allocation of funding for themselves. At the very least, in times such as these, the prudent action to take should have been to hold their spending flat … if not find ways to reduce spending below that allocated for 2009. But no … they garnered even more money for themselves and others in the legislative branch of government.

I’m sure they’ll pat themselves on their backs and call it a success that they cut millions of dollars from the proposed budget … but the fact of the matter is … HR2918 represents a significant increase. It racked in at $155 million dollars (5.8%) above the 2009 budget. It increases Senate funding by 3.5% to $926 million and increases funding to the House by 5.2% to $1.37 billion. I doubt that very many of their constituent’s households were able to garner such a generous increases in income, yet these guys are going along, business as usual, continually borrowing ever more money to sustain their status quo.

Uh … Hello Congress … have you looked at the National Debt figures lately? You’re bankrupting our nation … something I consider a serious National Security threat!

References:
Democratic Perspective on HR 2918
Republican Perspective on HR2918

If CON is the opposite of PRO, why is CONgress the opposite of PROgress?