"Congressional Feeding Trough Remains Open
and Well-Stocked Despite Government Shutdown"
by Benjamin Bartee
“There’s hope in the words and emotion in the eyes,
It’s so easy to be misled by the savvy gentle guise.
And like fools we trust the delivery,
But it’s all just drunk sincerity.”
- Bad Religion, "Drunk Sincerity"
"The decrepit fiends of The Swamp are out in full force putting on a big show of solidarity with all of their subjects constituents left out in the rain when the gears of state grind to a halt. What they rarely, if ever, mention is that their paychecks arrive regardless of whether the government gets shut down or not, or for how long.
Via Constitution Center: “Over in the Legislative Branch, the support staff for Congress would be affected. “During a funding gap, pay for congressional employees would not be disbursed if there is no appropriation to fund legislative branch activities,” the CRS says. Staffers deemed critical would need to work because they are needed to “support Congress with its constitutional responsibilities or those necessary to protect life and property.”
But members of Congress will still get paychecks, under two parts of the Constitution. Article I, Section 6, says that congress members “shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.” The 27th Amendment also forbids any change in the compensation rate for Congress during a current term.”
Here is Democratic Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives, Katherine Clark, describing the denial of millions of Americans the benefits they have been conditioned to rely on, as points of political “leverage”: “Of course, there will be, you know, families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leverage times we have.”
One can argue about the merits of the Democrat demands; extending Affordable Care Act tax credits, although by no means a permanent solution to the ongoing controlled demolition of the middle class by neoliberal policymakers or the farce that is the so-called healthcare system, would help working-class taxpayers barely scraping by significantly in the short term.
But the essential issue is that the Congress members playing the cards don’t actually have any chips in the game; it’s all House money, as it were. The suffering of their constituents, as laid bare in the above quote, is just another point of “leverage” in the political games they play (with other people’s money).
From a broader perspective, in the same way that the CIA budget doubled in the two decades after the greatest intelligence failure of all time, 9/11, the career success of your standard Congressman is wholly untethered from whatever results he does or doesn’t produce for his constituents. As long as the august Senator plays the game right, as long as he services his actual constituency, the donor class, he wins - no matter how much his theoretical constituents suffer.
This entire spectacle is the product of a political system in which the governing authorities and the governed occupy two entirely separate castes of society, with little to no intercaste mobility. The members of the subordinate underclass who do break the mold, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, either sell their souls on arrival (like AOC) or else are quickly shunned just as soon as their colleagues catch the slightest whiff of populist sentimentality.
This is class war - but an asymmetric one, waged by the permanent governing class against the (increasingly permanent) underclass. It’s socialism for them, as they feed off of government largesse and abuse the mechanisms of state to enrich themselves, and bootstrap capitalism for you. They are the residents of the Capitol; we are the rabble of Panem.
“Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.”
There sits in Congress a proposed constitutional amendment, championed Rep. Eli Crane, that would halt, with no backpay, all Congressional salaries during any government shutdown. Via Rep. Eli Crane (emphasis added): “As many of you are aware, the federal government officially entered a shutdown yesterday. While the House of Representatives passed a funding extension through November 21, 2025, the measure still requires 60 votes in the U.S. Senate before heading to the President’s desk. Unfortunately, only two Democrats and one Independent currently support this effort, meaning the government will remain shut down until five more Democrats vote in favor of the bill."
In the meantime, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) has requested that his pay be withheld for the duration of the shutdown. He believes it is inappropriate to receive a salary while many Americans are furloughed or facing delayed paychecks. Furthermore, Rep. Crane has cosponsored a constitutional amendment introduced by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), which would prohibit lawmakers from receiving pay during government shutdowns. It would also preclude Members of Congress from receiving any back pay afterward.”
While laudable on its own merits, however, this bill is by no means a panacea for what ails the country; the real gold mine for these people is not their relatively paltry salaries (about $112,000/yr for rank-and-file) but all of the insider trading they’re allowed to do with impunity and all of the cushy board positions and lobbying gigs they’re awarded - and their family members; see Hunter Biden - by their donors after their loyal “public” service. Nancy Pelosi didn’t become a hundred-millionaire cashing her government checks; she made that money parlaying her government position for private gain.
The entire governing structure is broken, in that modern D.C. in no way represents anything close to what the Founding Fathers envisioned. On the contrary, it more resembles the predatory, parasitical foreign regime from which they liberated themselves at great personal peril."
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