Another way to rule…American style

The recent discussion of who knows what is in the recent bills our federal legislative branch is voting on prompts this post. The obvious examples are the various health care reform bills that amount to thousands of pages. Who can read them in the time allotted, and then take the time to follow the arcane language of referrals and such that is in such a bill, which ever version and title. Does anyone even know what is in the latest proposal? I don’t, anyway.

Now some do. They are mostly “staffers”.

And these staffers are also fellow Americans, and do the most basic work any government employee should do, kinda like a Senator or Congressman should be doing. And I suppose that many of our elected legislators depend on what their hired staff says to do? Maybe I am wrong, but my “inside the beltway” experience says otherwise. Much federal money and other such things work this way these days.

Now all this “staffer stuff” is new in the last few decades. And so is who pays their salaries and benefits, which are good? Mostly we taxpayers pay their salaries and benefits, but it will take an investigative reporter to delve further. After about 30 google searches, I have given up for now.

For example, the present Speaker of the House I think runs several committees, each with its own staff. These staffs include, I think, the congressional staff, the speaker staff, and I think a Democratic Party staff. Now I just don’t know right now, and I really don’t know for sure who pays right now.

What I do know for sure is the quality of life of those staffers I observed during my time “inside the beltway”. One example galled me. The Congressional staffers had our elected congressmen build a $54 million dollar gym in a federal building just for them. Even Senate staffers were persona non grata. They had their own gym, too.

So who’s in charge in D.C. I really don’t know for sure. But for sure, we Americans are really in charge, in the end.