Congressional Embezzlement

Imagine you are the owner of ABC Widget Company and that you have just discovered some of your employees have regularly been leaving company premises during paid work hours. These employees have been collecting pay for work not performed. And while they were away, your widget production fell.

Wouldn’t you, as a business owner, feel you have been wronged? Wouldn’t you feel you have a legal right to recover your losses?

I’d side with the business owner on this one. Call me old-fashioned, but I was raised in a generation that believed a dollar’s worth of work ought to be rendered for a dollar’s worth of pay. I’d feel that the business owner ought to legally recover not only the lost wages, but he also should recover his losses for widgets not produced.

Now, would you be surprised if I told you that nearly every member of the U.S. Congress is doing precisely what those imaginary wayward employees of ABC Widget Company were doing? Am I saying that your congressman is collecting a $174,000 salary and is leaving company premises during paid work hours? Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. And more. Our elected congressional representatives are pocketing the salary that you and I pay them and are busily “out of their offices” engaged as telemarketers. They are dialing your phone number and mine raising funds for their next election!

There are “call centers” complete with “scripts” to aid individual congressmen in “dialing for dollars.” Both parties have told newly elected members of Congress that they “should spend 30-hours a week” in these call centers which are conveniently located just down the street from their offices.

Why just down the street? Because by law members of Congress cannot make such fund-raising calls from their offices. So our elected representatives circumvent the law, go outside of their offices and spend 4 or more hours a day making fund-raising calls. They are literally told to do so by political party leadership. Why? Because the Political Action Committees (PACs and Super-PACs) have helped fund their elections. Congressmen are told their first priority each day is to raise $18,000 to replenish the Super-PAC’s funds for the next election.

If you would like to verify this, you can do what I did. Go online to the CBS website and navigate to Season 48, Episode 32 of the 60-Minutes show. You can hear reporter Norah O’Donnell interviewing Florida Rep. (R), David Jolly, Wisconsin Rep. (R) Reid Ribble, New York Rep. (D) Steve Israel, and Minnesota Rep. (D Rick Nolan. You’ll hear these congressmen spell out the details. They are sponsoring a bill (H.R. 4443) attempting to stop the practice of federal elected employees from “dialing for dollars.”

Former Rep. Israel admits he has spent more than 4,000 hours soliciting donations. Israel adds that congressmen spend more time raising money than on constituent needs or being on the floor of Congress. Rep. Nolan tells us the “last few years of Congress have been the most unproductive ever.”

Now let’s return to our imaginary ABC Widget Company. If you or I were among those employees collecting pay for work not performed, would we not likely be prosecuted under the law? Might we not be convicted for embezzlement? Why, then, do we sit idly by and allow our elected congressmen to break the law?