Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Damn Faint Praise

Last week's edition of the Riverfront Times, St. Louis's alternate weekly, provides some damning details about Richard Gephardt's career:

Gephardt, who turns 64 next month, showed up more than 90 percent of the time to vote in all but 7 of his 28 years in Congress.

Yeowtch. So for 75% of his career, he's been present 90% of the time to do his job. Although that's better than my scholastic career, it's nowhere near my professional behaviour.

The Riverfront Times goes on to enumerate some of the years where he's fallen short:

1987, where he made 18% of votes.
1988, where he made 80% of votes.
1996, where he made 88% of votes.
1997, where he made 87% of votes.
2003, where he made 9% of votes.

The RFT doesn't cover the last two years, but they don't have to. It serves to highlight that legislators, of both parties, not just Gephardt and the 2004 senatorial tandem that shamed their consituencies most publicly, receive hundred thousand dollar salaries and then don't bother to show up for work.

Imagine the jobs you've held, gentle reader, where you can take that six figure salary and only show up one day every two weeks. Or the one where you got four day weekends every weekend without working more than eight hours Monday through Thursday. Are you having trouble? So am I.

Of course, if you start to figure in vacation, you might have missed a couple of weeks of work. Certainly, this downs your percentage. But it shouldn't figure into a position, such as Congressional representative, where the employee has plenty of time to relax when Congress is not in session. Nor do Congressional missed votes come from sick days, for the most part. Instead, they come when the employee takes care of personal business--whether looking for another job or working deals with other employees regarding workload and credit for accomplishments.

No, our legislators have the best of government work. High salaries, long vacations, and less accountability than real people or even other government employees.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:08 PM