If Only

If only I could get a raise every year no matter how dismal my performance (and it was up to me to decide to vote against it).
That's exactly what congress gets to do this year.

According to the latest Rasmussen telephone survey Congress has an appalling 9% approval rating. That's embarrassing. And yet they voted themselves a raise, an extra $4700 for 2009. That comes out to a 2.8% raise next year. OK here's the deal, if you worked where I work and you had a 9% approval you'd be fired, forget the raise.

I think the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste said it best:

"Members of Congress don't deserve one additional dime of taxpayer money in 2009," said CCAGW President Tom Schatz. "While thousands of Americans are facing layoffs and downsizing, Congress should be mortified to accept a raise. They failed to pass most of their appropriations bills, the deficit is on pace to reach an unprecedented $1 trillion, and the national debt stands at $10 trillion. In addition, this Congress has been ethically challenged, plagued with corruption allegations, convictions, and sex scandals."
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) probably rues the day she so blithely promised that Democrats would 'lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.' Instead, there has been a relentless degradation of the ethics rules. While Congress has sat in judgment of everyone from oil company executives and financial services industry executives to domestic automaker CEOs, it has failed spectacularly to police itself.

And in the spirit of the season:

"If Congressional leaders believe that the taxpayers should give pay raises to this rogue's gallery of ineptitude and venality, they ought to step away from the spiked egg nog," concluded Schatz

By the way: Did anyone catch 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl say that Elmer Fudd is the smartest guy in Congress?