Every member of the House of Representatives receives a member’s representation allowance (MRA) that they use to pay for staff, office space, travel to and from their districts, and direct mailings to their constituents. If the Sequester goes into effect, the MRA will be cut substantially, which means that members will have to make difficult decisions. Do they lay off staff? That’s what Doug Lamborn (R-CO) did. Do they use their own campaign cash to do mailings? That’s what another Republican decided to do. All of a sudden, the consequences of the Sequester are making an impression on the mouth-breathers. It’s kind of like when their 17 year old daughter announces that not only has she been accepted to Harvard, but her deadbeat boyfriend got her pregnant. In other words, shit got personal.
As the White House twitter page makes clear, a whole lot of things are about to get personal for a whole lot of people who take a whole lot of things for granted. And most of them are not whiny-ass chiefs of staff to members of the House of Representatives:
GOP chiefs of staff pressed high-ranking leadership aides for more information about the cuts at a recent meeting, according to several sources familiar with the meeting.
“People asked, ‘what do you suggest?'” one source said of the dissuasion.“There’s members that have been here 10 to 20 terms and you’ve got senior staff that are making a certain amount of money, you can’t very well tell them that they all have to take pay cuts … if you are locked into a lease, you can’t renegotiate that lease so what are people supposed to do? And nobody has the right answer for that,” one source told The Hill.
The real world slaps them in the face a little bit and they start complaining instead of having the epiphany that is just begging to be had. Gee, firing staff doesn’t create jobs. Canceling contracts is frowned upon. People don’t like stagnant salaries, let alone pay cuts, and they don’t perform well when they have no incentives. You can’t pay the rent if you don’t have enough money.
The only thing different from the real world here is that these morons are imposing this austerity on themselves, and for no good reason.
One veteran chief of staff lamented that his office hasn’t given raises to the employees for several years – worrying that without a reward for their hard work, it will be difficult to attract bright individuals to Capitol Hill.
“What’s the incentive for smart talented people to come work for Congress,” the source said.
I’d like to slap that veteran chief’s mouth.
These would be the same staffers that think Friends of Hamas is a real organization, or that Guantanamo detainees will be getting GI Bill benefits?
Come on Rand Paul and Paul Ryan, give everyone a teaching moment on how much better off they’ll represent everyone once the Sequester forces them to be fiscally broken.
Ah, yes, the conservative hypocrite syndrome – it’s not a problem until it’s MY problem…..I think my retired military, Rush-loving, Paul-Ryan-is-an-intellectual, current DOD employee brother-in-law is just about to come down with this !
I think my retired military, Rush-loving, Paul-Ryan-is-an-intellectual, current DOD employee brother-in-law is just about to come down with this!
You’re Ezra Klein’s brother-in-law? Bad joke!! Still, one out of those three apply to Klein. One too many.
I guess I probably will never understand the Ezra-haters. He’s like the nicest person in the world. Sure, that means he isn’t necessarily the most effective ally in a bar fight, but there is more to life than bar fights.
Ezra is a nice guy who bends over backwards to defend the moderate GOP actions of the Obama administration.
He’s looking to be mayor of the Village. And he will probably make it if demographics go the way you believe.
What it comes down to is this…..is Brooks unacceptable because he is a republican, or because of his ‘let me straddle this fence’ style of punditry is not worth reading or listening to? It’s an important point, because to my ears Klein is the same as Brooks, just from the other side of the political spectrum. It might be the Klein has to be this way to eventually be elected Mayor, and the political climate is better, he can fly his Progressive flag. But to me he will still be the same as Brooks, only that he used the tactics to get there, and Brooks uses them to stay. In a way he is climbing the ladder by standing on the shoulders of others doing the dirty hard work that will forever brand them as DFH’s. Good for him, I guess. He will be/is rich.
I don’t ‘hate’ Klein, it’s just that I don’t read him, listen to him, or take him seriously when others quote him.
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I occasionally think that Klein grants too much benefit of the doubt, but I’d like some examples of the kind egregious “both sides do it” stuff you are accusing him of using, because nothing stands out in my memory banks.
On the whole, I think Klein does a pretty good job. I, for one, am not ready to crucify him because of his occasional “benefit of the doubt” moments, as you describe them. I just have to shake my head when I see those calls for his head on a pike. It just sounds too much like one of those “purity purges” that the GOP goes on all the time.
I have one of those bils too. Only he was classified as 4-F and therefore, skipped that service part before landing sweet gigs with defense contractors. He’s also racist, homophobic, and misogynist. Needless to say, he loathes me.
Eric Cantor’s wife is a liberal Democrat.
Someone in a marriage has to have brains.
“I’d like to slap that veteran chief’s mouth.”
I really do try to be a kind person but I just hate them. I really can’t stand them at this point. I think the whole bunch of them are sociopaths.
Do they lay off staff? That’s what Doug Lamborn (R-CO) did.
This guy is my Congresscritter and I have to correct the spelling. It’s Doug Lamebrain (N-CO).
Seriously, though, that’s how the wingnuts think. They’ve been so indoctrinated in business-first and rich-first thinking that they just accept it. It’s like that guy at the anti-Obamacare rally who stood up and made a speech that got the crowd all excited – then passed around a hate explaining that he’d been laid off, his insurance was cancelled, and his wife had cancer so could they please help?
So of course Lamebrain laid off his staff and of course his staff will blame Obama. Any other alternative course of action just won’t occur to any of them. Wingnuts on working for minimum wage at Walmart (not a theorietical reference for this liberal – it’s our local supermarket unfortunately) and getting food stamps and EITC will still listen to Limpbaugh on the way to work and get LIVID over all the tax money going to lazy people – without quite getting that they don’t pay any of those taxes and the tax money in question is going to them.
Wonder what part of “drowning government in a bathtub” he/she doesn’t get. Seriously, how “smart and talented” does a staffer have to be to say “no” to tax increases, “yes” to corporate and Pentagon requests, deregulation, and denying women/minorities/LBGT equal rights and rights to personal privacy, and “yes” to Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security cuts? A twenty year old PC could manage that. Plus, shouldn’t the intelligence and talent of any staffer be in line with that of his/her boss? High school dropouts would be sufficient for many and I hear they’re not expensive at all.
Wonder what part of “drowning government in a bathtub” he/she doesn’t get.
Amen to that. If you work for government don’t stand so close to the drain or you’re the first to go down.
Personally I think congress critters should look to undocumented workers for employees. We exploit them by the millions in agriculture, landscaping, nannies, housekeepers, etc. Why should DC miss out on the savings?
Let Congress come face to face with what is not just an immigration issue but primarily a labor issue.
Could be PT Barnum said it best: “There’s a sucker born every minute”
–No shortage of young idealists willing to work for pocket change to get their feet in the door of DC politics….or at least Republican politicians seem to think so…