The official unemployment rate now tops 10.2 percent, the average household income continues to decline, and people in the United States face unprecedented debt.
 The U.S. Congress owns a piece of this. |
But at least the politicians on Capitol Hill seem to be doing just fine. The Center for Responsive Politics has released a report showing that 237 members of Congress are millionaires, based on a rough estimate of income and assets from 2008. The figure is a full 44 percent of all house representatives and senators.
These numbers beg the question: Can these legislators truly represent the people?
The baseline salary for all members of Congress is $174,000 annually, an amount that is adjusted to inflation and cost of living and is five times higher than what the average person living in the United States earns. Members of the Congress also receive premium health insurance and other benefits that are publicly funded. Despite these vast incentives, most lawmakers continue to invest and/or work directly in the private sector, using their positions of power to generate personal profits.
According to the report, the richest legislators are Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) with an estimated net worth of $251 million; Rep. Jane Harmon (D-Calif.) with $244.7 million, Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) with $214.5 million, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) with $209.7 million, and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) with $208.8 million
On average, senators are worth an estimated $1.79 million and representatives are worth $622,254, though several Congress members have assets valued at less than zero. President Obama has a net worth of about $3,670,505. A dismal percentage of the U.S. population are millionaires, while more than half of the population will spend some point of their lives below the poverty line.
The numbers released by the CRP are based on public information by estimating the assets and income of each legislator to a minimum and maximum and then assuming the median. Personal residences and certain private assets are excluded, indicating that the estimates may be significantly lower than actual numbers.
According to a Nov. 6 article in Sphere, the second most commonly held stock among members of Congress is Bank of America, which received a $50.2 billion bailout over the last two years! Corporate campaign contributions alone should be enough to disqualify most of these politicians as representatives of the public interest, but these members of Congress are directly benefitting from their own bailout legislation. Could the conflict of interest be any more apparent?
Other popular investments were Wells Fargo, Citi Group, and Goldman Sachs, all institutions that received bailout money. The sixth most popular stock was Pfizer, the international pharmaceutical company responsible in part for the exorbitant cost of prescription medication in America.
The interests of these career politicians are inseparably tied to those of corporate capital. It is an illusion to think legislators could possibly put the well-being of the homebuyer and the sick before the profits of the mortgage banks and the health insurance giants. Capitalist democracy is nothing but government of, by and for the rich.
It is high time this plutocracy comes to an end.
