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Congressman Mitchell, The Fiscal Conservative - 11/08/2009

I received a newsletter from Congressman Mitchell's office the other day that I found amusing.  He rails against the Congressional automatic pay raises (which come to about $4,000/year per person).  And rightly so.  All the reasons that he gives for Congress receiving pay raises are right ones, and even more so.

For instance, he talks about how Congress shouldn't be getting pay raises when unemployment is rising.  I would also suggest that Congress shouldn't be getting pay raises, or paid at all, because it comes from tax dollars.  If Congressmen are to be paid, it should be by contributions from their individual constituents so that they can be paid what their employers think they're worth.

But I digress.  Congressman Mitchell's big complaint about automatic pay raises is that it's not a fiscally conservative policy, which with 535 members of Congress amounts to a little over $2 million per year.  Somehow, he passes this idea with a straight face, and then votes for bills costing $200 million per year that distort the market in energy research, and bills that increase defense spending by $120 billion (yes, "billion" with a "b"), so much for getting out of the Middle East.

If we've any hope of implementing "change" in a positive way, we need to recognize the drivel coming out of our representatives mouths for what it is really is.

Congressman Mitchell also sent out a newsletter recently pointing to his opponents for using lies to make him look bad.  When we inquired with his campaign which opponents he was referring to, our campaign was not on the list.  We're proud to be the ones using his actual and truthful record to make him look bad, without resorting to deception.