OPINION:
According to “House cancels two upcoming weeks in Washington, extending pre-midterm campaign stretch” (Web, Sept. 3) the House leadership has decreed that there will be what amounts to “61/2 weeks [for members] to campaign in their districts before the Nov. 3 midterms.”
That is over a month-and-a-half that these members will not be doing U.S. government business.
Basically, it’s a legislative branch shutdown.
The federal government is paid for by taxes from all American taxpayers. If 425 incumbent Congress members are being given, on the taxpayers’ dime, time to canvass their districts to run against non-incumbent challengers using their own dimes, then the U.S. taxpayers are putting their fingers on the scale of “equal representation.”
Since congressional members’ primary reason for getting paid is representing their states, then work they do specifically for the residents of their home state should be paid for by that state — if they get paid at all during this time.
This an example of waste, fraud and abuse of the highest level. If a member of Congress member is not doing U.S. government business, he or she should not be paid by the U.S. government.
JAMES KOUT
Bowie, Maryland
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