First Things First

As noted in the previous entry, your Congresscritter gets a variety of generous perks in addition to a generous and automatically-increasing salary. How generous? Get a load of this (via Politico:

A leased Cadillac: $557 a month.

Chinese food for 230 colleagues: $1,425.

A 46-inch Sony flat-screen television: $2,805.

Having taxpayers foot the bill: priceless.

Members of Congress get between $1.3 million and $1.63 million per year to run their offices. Much of
the money goes to staff salaries and rent for district offices. Some of it does not.

Politico names a number of Democrats who find creative ways to spend this taxpayer largesse:

A review of congressional records shows that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) used his Member’s Representational Allowance to purchase four Sony Bravia 46-inch, high-definition LCD TVs for his two Chicago-area offices earlier this year.

The cost: $2,805.92 each, for a total of $11,224.

The reason? "They replaced older, bulkier and more cumbersome sets, making it easier for the staff to monitor local and national news as well as to participate in teleconferences," according to Jackson's office.

This doesn't pass the laugh test. TVs sit on a table. Unless Jackson's staff is tasked with lugging these TVs from room to room, the fact that they're 'bulkier and more cumbersome' is a mighty lame excuse.

Now, I have no doubt that both parties piss away our hard-earned money on such nonsense. But a million bucks? Puh-leeze!