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.
