What if we could change the way our elected officials served their time in office by voting on their pay scale? It would be interesting to see how efficient our congress could actually be if they were forced to do their jobs, right? For the 2013 calendar year, Congress has already planned to take 239 days off; this seems to be quite disproportional to the number of vacation days the average American employee is granted which is only 13. That is over half of the year that our elected officials have granted themselves while they have yet to approve one single day required time off for the rest of us. Americans are not required to obtain a certain number of vacation days by the government, yet other countries such as those in the European Union get four weeks mandatory paid vacation. Apparently Congress has decided that they are worthy of paid time off while we all wake up and go to our places of employment and have to do actual work. The average pay for a United States Senator, according to Senate.gov, is a staggering $174,000 per year of service. These representatives are elected into office by the people to run this country while they allot themselves over half of the year for time off making nearly $73,000 more than a married couple at the high end of the middle class. — (The Distribution of Household Income and the Middle Class) On top of their ridiculous salaries, which is provided by the taxpayers, are the health benefits, travel expenses, and other things that we might not have heard of which are provided to Congress. There are funds allocated for things such as a “furniture and furnishing allowance”. Yes, you read that correctly. Congress is allowed $40,000 for state office furniture and or furnishings. — “Each Senator is authorized $40,000 for state office furniture and furnishings for one or more offices, if the aggregate square footage of office space does not exceed 5,000 square feet. The base authorization is increased by $1,000 for each authorized additional incremental increase in office space of 200 square feet.” – (Congressional Salaries and Allowances Report) theallegiant/congress-salaries/
Posted on: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 20:06:28 +0000