These days, when money is hard to come by, what do we expect to be done? Is Joe the plumber going to unclog the economic problems from the toilet currently known as the American and global economy? The frank answer would be no. In reality, Joe the plumber is busy unclogging toilets so he can pay his mortgage. The real problem solvers should be the men and women of the 111th Congress. At least this is what would be expected.
Unfortunately, some of our elected officials would rather talk about Alex Rodriguez’s use of performance-enhancing drugs. In the past, some of the congressmen wanted to form a committee to investigate whether the New England Patriots football team spied on another team before the Super Bowl. This past year or so, congress once again brought a baseball pitcher by the name of, Roger Clemens, to Capitol Hill, in order for him to testify on his involvement with steroids. Oh yes, the men and women of the U.S. Congress are protecting our Constitutional rights. I believe that the imaginary 43rd Ammendment states something about the conviction of players and organizations for cheating in sports. Before this recent economic crisis, Congress actually dealt with these types of conflicts. It is quite unreal how we elect our leaders so they can debate about these insignificant topics, when there are so many more important things going on in the world.
These days when the everybody is short on cash, people are traveling less and staying in the vicinity of their residences. Congressmen are also staying in congress to actually do something about the economic crisis. This is a good thing, but let’s be reasonable. If the economy was strong, Congress would probably be on recess. Each individual congressman would be using our money, in the form taxes, to pay for their extravagant vacations to exotic destinations. The total expenses accumulated on these “well earned” vacations would be free of charge to each congressman. Of course, we aren the ones being affected by these common vacations. Now everything has changed. The Congressmen are being coerced to earn their seats in Congress by actually dealing with real and significant issues. With an array of problems listed on the 111th Congress’ agenda, the least they could do is sacrifice their time off to be the “problem solvers” they advertised to be in their campaigns. That was their job, wasn’t it?
-payam93