Wait, Here’s My Shocked Face!

In what must come as a surprise to exactly no one, Congress was the biggest waste of taxpayer money this year according to a legislator who annual publishes a report on wasteful government programs.

I’m sure you can picture my shocked expression - it looks just like the E*TRADE baby's.

Congress, which was allocated $1.32 billion this year, is on track to yield the least productive legislative annual session since 1947, with a scant 61 bills passed and enacted into law to date. Now, if my math is correct that’s 65 years. And you wonder why Congress currently sports an 83% disapproval rate, its lowest in roughly four decades. 

Want more good news? 20 Senator (for those keeping score at home that’s one-fifth of the entire Senate, unless of course you abide by the sitting President’s census of having visited all 57 states) have not pushed forth one amendment to be considered in 2012.

Now for those readers who undergo an annual review on their respective job performance, how much longer would you remain employed at an average congressional salary of $174,000 with a track record like that? My guess is sometime after lunch you would be escorted out of the building accompanied by large cardboard boxes.

The Senate Budget Committee came under particular wrath, not having come up with a budget for the past three years and held just 12 hearings in 2012, fewer than all but just five committees from both sides of the aisle.

Next in the cross-hairs of the report was the Senate Finance Committee, which passed just 11 measures. In all, the report cited more than 100 government programs that burned through $18 billion. No mention of those $600 toilets or $100 screwdrivers that you occasionally read about that highlight government purchasing programs.

When you consider that Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley runs under 100 words, and the word count for government guidelines on purchasing cabbage is 26,000, you kind of get the idea.

Want more fun(d) facts?

This year, the government spent $365,000 on a robotic squirrel to gauge its interaction with rattlesnakes and nearly $700,000 was granted to create a musical about biodiversity and climate change. No doubt some of that was earmarked as Al Gore’s salary for directing.

Perhaps instead of performance reviews we should acquaint many of these career and most importantly, idle, bureaucrats with the nuanced practice of exit interviews.