Skirting a statute

The Washington Times ^ | 6-30-05 | John McCaslin

[JZelle]

"We need one simple campaign finance law. One that I'd bet the founders would have put in the Constitution if they saw all the stuff going on today."

Our founders couldn't have suspected it would come to this because they never intended for anyone to make a career out of poilitcs. Most of them had farms or other businesses back home, real jobs.

[American_Centurion]

Dern columns got messed up! Still you can get the jist. Sorry.

[VRWCmember]

I pulled the list, researched party affiliation, and then resorted the list by rank in who stole the most in taxpayer salary dollars. Interestingly, the top 6 offenders are democrat; 8 of the top 10 are democrat; 18 of the top 25 are democrat.

Rank	Congress Member   *Denotes a Congress Member who ran for higher office	Party Affiliation	Days Missed 2003	Days Missed 2004	Final Total
1	Kerry, John*	D	76	70	$90,932.68
2	Gephardt, Richard*	D	85	46	$81,362.53
3	Edwards, John*	D	52	50	$63,543.16
4	Lieberman, Joseph*	D	63		$38,828.79
5	Gutierrez, Luis	D	19	23	$26,197.51
6	Graham, Bob*	D	41		$25,269.53
7	DeMint, James*	R		37	$23,305.56
8	Kucinich, Dennis*	D		28	$17,636.64
9	Fletcher, Ernie*	R	27		$16,640.91
10	Deutsch, Pete*	D		23	$14,487.24
11	Majette, Denise*	D		22	$13,857.36
12	Carson, Brad*	D		19	$11,967.72
13	Toomey, Patrick*	R		19	$11,967.72
14	Collins, Mac*	R		18	$11,337.84
15	John, Chris*	D		18	$11,337.84
16	Lipinski, William	D		18	$11,337.84
17	Conyers, John	D	17		$10,477.61
18	Isakson, Johnny*	R		15	$9,448.20
19	Meeks, Gregory	D		15	$9,448.20
20	Mollohan, Alan	D		15	$9,448.20
21	Greenwood, Jim	R		14	$8,818.32
22	Hoeffel, Joseph*	D		14	$8,818.32
23	Bell, Chris	D		13	$8,188.44
24	Nethercutt, George*	D		13	$8,188.44
25	Campbell, Ben Nighthorse	R		11	$6,928.68

[VRWCmember]

See post #23.

[billbears]

No offense but I don't care what party they're from. They're for the most part thieves. Legalized thieves, but theives nonetheless. Wasting money either through their votes or getting paid for not coming to work

[VRWCmember]

No offense but I don't care what party they're from. They're for the most part thieves. Legalized thieves, but theives nonetheless. Wasting money either through their votes or getting paid for not coming to work

Consider this:
Total Democrats $461,328.05 *
Total Republicans $88,447.23 *

* totals by party for those in the list of top 25 offenders.

The total amount of overpayments to all eight of the republicans on the list of the top 25 offenders was less than the overpayment to Senator Jean Francois Querrie (D-France/Mass)

[VRWCmember]

No offense but I don't care what party they're from. They're for the most part thieves. Legalized thieves, but theives nonetheless. Wasting money either through their votes or getting paid for not coming to work

Consider this:
Total Democrats $461,328.05 *
Total Republicans $88,447.23 *
Kerry, John - $90,932.68

* totals by party for those in the list of top 25 offenders.

The total amount of overpayments to all eight of the republicans on the list of the top 25 offenders was less than the overpayment to Senator Jean Francois Querrie (D-France/Mass)

[billbears]

Your point is taken. However as it has been pointed out in the anecdote about Davey Crockett (I believe) and spending, it's not the amount that's an issue, it's that it happened at all

[retiredcpo]

I've also wondered why the Hatch Law doesn't apply for politicians. I'm a government employee and am not allowed to have anything to do with politics on the government's time.