Time for money calls to end

Editorial by Jacksonville Daily News, January 24, 2016.

We’ve frequently heard bleating about how Congress passes bills that lawmakers reportedly never read. The Affordable Care Act. The USA Patriot Act. The American Clean Energy and Security Act. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act. These are just a few examples of complex, expensive and far-reaching pieces of legislation whose details emerge only after elected leaders vote on them.

Why don’t our elected leaders have enough time to peruse the legislation they lord over the rest of us?

One answer might be that Congress doesn’t work enough. The House of Representatives, for instance, is scheduled to be in session for 110 days this year. If that holds up, and given the work schedules for 2014 and 2015, House lawmakers will have been on the job an average of 118 days over the past three years. Meanwhile, earlier this week, it was reported that 41 percent of U.S. workers did not take a vacation last year.

Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., believes Congress ought to work more. Last year he sponsored a bill that would require House members to work at least 40 hours a week. Jolly’s “Stop Act” would ban lawmakers from personally calling potential donors to solicit campaign contributions while on the clock. Jolly’s bill would permit lawmakers to attend fundraisers in their honor and meet with potential backers, but the goal is to put office time they spend on the phone raising money to better use for constituents.

How serious a problem is this?

Well, Jolly’s office pointed to a recent New York Times op-ed by outgoing Congressman Steve Israel of New York, who estimated that over his 15-year career he had spent 4,200 hours — or the equivalent of seven working weeks yearly — on the phone to contributors. In January 2013, the liberal website Huffington Post reported on what it called the “dreary existence” of newly elected congressional members as explained by a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee PowerPoint document. The document suggested that rookie lawmakers allot four hours a day for “call time,” during which they phone possible contributors to feed campaign coffers. Two years ago, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat, told the National Journal that senators “spend two-thirds of the last two years of their term raising money.”

“We can’t have a part-time Congress in a full-time world,” Jolly said in a statement. “Americans wonder why we haven’t defeated ISIS, secured our border, provided health care for veterans or reduced the national debt. Here’s why: Too many in Congress are more focused on raising money than solving the problems people elected them to fix.”

Jolly’s bill, does not seek to upend the pursuit of dough in our politics. But he does want to reduce its influence by eliminating the consumptive telephonic glad-handing and refocusing lawmakers on doing the people’s business. 

A version of this editorial first appeared in The Ledger of Lakeland, Fla., a Halifax Media Group newspaper.

http://www.jdnews.com/news/20160124/time-for-money-calls-to-end/?Start=2