Lazy Bastard Congress

Holy fucking shit, I can’t believe this.  In regards to the Dem’s plans to actually put our Congressmen to work:
For lawmakers, it is awful, compared with what they have come to expect. For much of this election year, the legislative week started late Tuesday and ended by Thursday afternoon -- and that was during the relatively few weeks the House wasn't in recess.

Josh is right, this article sounds straight from the Onion, but wouldn’t have been as funny or outrageous.  How in the hell have I not been informed of this before?  Have I just been living under a rock, or has nobody pointed out this extra-super short work week for Congress?  I betcha 100-to-1 that this kind of thing wouldn’t sit-well with the American people.  Even diehard Republicans would be slow to defend this bull dooky.  And sure, this probably wasn’t a huge secret, but this really should have been a staple of every good Democrat; especially the ones lucky enough to get on TV.

Oh, but one important tidbit that the article failed to mention was how often Congresses in the past met.  But I guess that would have required research and it really is much easier to just gather a few quotes and move on.  So I did a tiny bit of research and find this from Rolling Stone on The Worst Congress Ever:
In the Sixties and Seventies, Congress met an average of 162 days a year. In the Eighties and Nineties, the average went down to 139 days. This year, the second session of the 109th Congress will set the all-time record for fewest days worked by a U.S. Congress: ninety-three. That means that House members will collect their $165,000 paychecks for only three months of actual work.

What this means is that the current Congress will not only beat but shatter the record for laziness set by the notorious "Do-Nothing" Congress of 1948, which met for a combined 252 days between the House and the Senate. This Congress -- the Do-Even-Less Congress -- met for 218 days, just over half a year, between the House and the Senate combined.

And it goes on to mention how many of those “work days” were just half days anyway, nine of which didn’t even have a single vote and lasted for less than eleven minutes.  What the fuck?  There’s no way that Republicans would have allowed that to be such a non-issue.  Talk Gitmo and people get scared and/or confused.  Talk about lazy bastards not getting anything done and you’ve got an audience.  Not a Congressman Flirts with Young Boys audience, but an audience nonetheless.

And sure, it’s not like it would have helped things any.  All the real deals were done behind closed doors, often after the bills had already cleared the House and Senate.  And they weren’t even allowed to read the important ones, so why bother showing up at all?  Might as well just sleep-in, right?  Especially with all those late-night fundraisers they have to keep going to.

But at least it would start the conversion in a negative way against the lazy suits the Republicans dressed-up as politicians, and we could push into the other stuff from there.  Like the whole lack of oversight issue.  That’d be much easier to push once we had already broken the ice with the laziness issue.  Sure, trust Bush all you want.   But not with these lazy bastards manning the switch.