Your Tax Dollars At Work

And now we present a new feature called Your Tax Dollars At Work. I know it's an obvious title, but if we called it Your Elected Officials Are Fucking Useless we'd probably end up on some sort of government watch list. We'll start the feature with a number of interesting tidbits from Congress over the last few months.

1) The Congressional Record from Tuesday, March 18, lists the Senate action for the entire day as: "Senate convened at 12:00:02 p.m. and recessed at 12:00:33 p.m., until 11 a.m. on Friday, March 21, 2008."

You read that right. According to the official record of the Senate, they were in session for less than one second. Senators showed up so there would be a quorum, someone was chosen to be President Pro Tempore, someone picked up a gavel, and the whole thing was done in three-tenths of a second. Imagine if everyone could have that kind of schedule. Drive all the way to the office, head upstairs, find your boss, and say "heyit'sgoodtoseeyouhopethingsarewellanywaytimetoclockoutI'llseeyoutomorrowbye." Come to think of it, that's about what I do now.

2) From January 22 to March 14, there have been only 85 roll call votes in the Senate. Only 85 times in two months when they felt the need to actually take action on something. Of these 85, a few are completely incomprehensible:

Upon Reconsideration Specter Amdt. No. 4189; To repeal section 13203 of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 by restoring the Alternative Minimum Tax rates that had been in effect prior thereto.

And a few are just effin' silly: "Allard Amdt. No. 4246; To raise taxes by $1.4 trillion for the purpose of fully funding 111 new or expanded federal spending programs."

Even more amazing, more than half of those 85 votes occurred on March 13 alone, when the Senate began voting on the FY 2009 budget resolution. There's only one thing Congress absolutely has to do in an election year (or any year), and that's figure out how to spend the people's money. That whips them into shape in a hurry. Even Clinton and Obama took a break from traversing the country to vote on March 13. Not McCain, though. It would be hard to rail on incessantly about the spending habits of the Federal Government if you actually had a recorded vote on the subject.

3) Bear with me on this one, it'll take you a minute. First, read this. It's just the one page, and trust me, it's worth your while. These are the words of Congressman Rob Bishop of Utah who, I can only hope, was speaking off the cuff, because if he actually took the time to put pen to paper and create this long, rambling, incomprehensible diatribe against who-knows-what, the people of Utah should demand a recall. It reads like an 11th grader's history report that was cobbled together at 6:25 a.m. after a long night of sucking whipped cream cans and watching Superbad.

The Constitution is not a living organism. It is a legal document. It says some things and doesn’t say other things. The Constitution is a piece of paper that has words, but each of those words have a meaning.

Let me see if I've got this straight. The Constitution is not, in fact, alive. That's just a figure of speech. Okay, I'm with you. It says some things. Now that's true, there's words all over it, I've seen them. I just don't understand most of them. But, according to Rep. Bishop, it doesn't say other things, for example "All male Americans shall have the right to pharmaceutical help if they can't get their dick hard. We'll even come up with a fictional disease to make men who can't get it up feel better."

And each of those words have a meaning. I kind of disagree with that, actually. For example, Article III, Section 3, says this: "The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted." I suppose, technically, each of those words does have a meaning, but they become gibberish when they are strung together, like a Miss America contestant's speech.

Then Bishop goes into something about Fawlty Towers (it was good that the editors of the Congressional Record knew how to spell "Cleese," unlike the Worcester Telegram and Gazette), which leads into something about George Burns, which leads into the fact that kids these days don't know how to make blonde jokes. For a supposedly serious discussion of the Constitution, the non sequiters are pretty overwhelming. It's like watching Mystery Science Theater. My favorite quote, however, is when Bishop says:

When (Lincoln) gave the Gettysburg Address, he talked about an indivisible Nation that started four score and seven years ago. That was a reference back to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. To be accurate, he should have said three score and 15 years ago was when we became an individual nation, because that was the ratification of the Constitution of the United States.

It appears that Bishop is attempting to either A) make Lincoln sound stupid, or B) make himself sound smart. Hey, I can add better than Lincoln! I should be President! I can find fault with one of the greatest speeches in the English language! Love MEEEEEEE!!!!

4) Proof of the separation of church and state: the phrase "God bless" has been said by a Member of Congress on the House or Senate floor 446 times in less than a year. Let's delve into this a little further:

4a) Sometimes when Members of Congress get bored, they give shout-outs to friends and loved ones while giving speeches on the floor. I assume that they call the person and tell them to watch, much like when you're sitting behind home plate at a baseball game. "Hey dude, I'm totally on C-SPAN right now! Turn it on! Tape it man!"

So it was that Rep. Steve Pearce used his time on the House floor to wish a happy anniversary to his wife. Keeping with the separation of church and state theme, Pearce said

We have been richly blessed with health, home and happiness. We have freedom, good mental acuity, spiritual fulfillment and peace that flows through our lives. Our abiding joy in our Father, the Creator, our pleasure in our grandchildren, our sense of pride in our daughter, and our sense of love and respect for our son-in-law, all are deep wellsprings of cool water that refresh our lives and renew us daily.

Sounds like Pearce has been taking writing lessons from Rob Bishop. Don't be too sure about that mental acuity, Congressman. He should have added "Oh, and honey, if you think of it, stop at CVS on the way home and get me wart remover and some Gold Bond powder."

I also like that he has a "sense of pride" in his daughter, and a sense of "love and respect" for his son-in-law. I understand you don't want to be repetetive in your speechwriting, but the implication is that he A) Doesn't love his daughter, and B) isn't proud of his son-in-law. Although if you're being technical you could argue he doesn't love or feel pride for either of them, merely the "sense of love," and the "sense of pride." Personally, I love my son. I feel a "sense of love" for my dog. I'm proud of my daughter. I feel a "sense of pride" when she makes it a whole night without urinating in her bed.

4b) One final point on this theme. Read Congressman Paul Broun's speech about why separation of church and state is bad for America and, apparently, washing machines. It starts in the middle of this page and continues on this page. Four things about this speech struck me funny. The first was his admission of "several broken marriages." That's funny; the biography on his website only lists one marriage, apparently thusfar unbroken: "Dr. Broun has been married to his wife Niki since 1985 and has two grown daughters, a teen-aged son and two grandchildren." I guess in the interest of space he opted to leave the first two or three marriages out.

The second thing I love is this section detailing how he found religion:

I was watching a professional football game, and as the cameras panned the crowd, there was a banner hanging over a railing up in the stands. And the big banner was there. The gentleman had this big rainbowtype of hair wig on, and the banner said John 3:16. At that time, it piqued my interest.

That's right; he found religion from seeing a guy in a rainbow wig at a football game on TV. Compared to that, the Jehovah's Witnesses that come to my house look like Tibetan monks. What if the rainbow wigged gentleman had had a sign that said "Hail Satan?" Or "Fuck Jesus?" What would have happened then? I'll bet there'd be more "episodes of broken relationships and financial problems" if he'd seen that sign instead. I suppose I shouldn't poke fun; I converted to Judaism after seeing a shirtless guy at a hockey game holding a sign that said "Red Wings Suck."

Third, Broun asks his fellow members to "read the Constitution, read what our Founding Fathers who were Bible-believing Christians believed, that every aspect of life should follow the dictates of God’s inherent Word." Granted, you can't really expect that a man who found Jesus via a drunken football fan to know too much about history. But if Rep. Broun had decided to pick up a history book instead of, say, watching football, he'd know that many of the Founding Fathers were not exactly true believers. For example, John Adams:

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

Or Thomas Jefferson:

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

Or Ben Franklin:

But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.

There you have it, Rep. Broun. The three principle drafters of the Declaration of Independence. Clearly "Bible-believing Christians."

Finally, Broun ends his sermon by saying "So I rise today to support Him (Jesus, that is) first and foremost and support the Bible as the basis of our Nation. I look forward to serving the Lord Jesus Christ." Seems to me you should be serving the good people of Georgia's 10th district before anyone else. But the Bible as the basis of our Nation? Which part? If you're talking Old Testament, you want a nation that's hastily thrown together in seven days, has names too long to pronounce, and could be wiped out by flood at any given time. And the New Testament is hardly a book to base a nation on so much as it is the story of a guy who was broke, cavorted with whores, and had some good ideas that not everyone listened to. In fact a lot of people thought he was an insane man, spouting gibberish and making an ass out of himself. Come to think of it, Rep. Broun may well be the messiah.