Out of Touch?

$174,000. That is what each of our Congressional Delegates are now paid every year. This year's cost of living increase was $4,700, a roughly 02.76% increase.

Let's see, last year I took a roughly 33% pay CUT just to stay employed. This also came hand in hand with increased hours, and a dramatic increase in physical effort each day on the job as labor costs also took a huge hit.

Right now, approximately 8.1% of working Americans are unemployed; and that number is growing with each passing day. Millions of households are in financial crisis, adults and children are going hungry, and Congress takes ANOTHER raise.

$174,000.

As time goes on, it is increasingly evident that our Leaders in DC are seriously out of touch with the citizens they claim to represent. Republican or Democrat, or Independent; it doesn't matter. These men and women are seemingly turning a blind eye to the realities of the "average" American household.

In my blog entitled "Who Will Feed America's Hungry?" I alluded that while billion dollar aid packages are being sent overseas, our Congress ignores the rampant hunger problem here in the US. This same problem has since been amplified many-fold as our national (and world) economy sinks to depths nearing depression-level weakness.

Amidst the terrible financial crisis gripping this country, our elected Representatives and Senators take a $4,700 pay raise, and now must try and get by on a mere $174,000.

I don't know about any of you reading this blog, but I'd love to see my Congressmen and women live for a year on what I'm currently making. Maybe then they'll realize that feeding their family, paying their bills, and living without health insurance on a fraction of what they make is more common than they currently think, and is a real and wide-spread problem that must be addressed.

Somehow, I truly doubt that many of our officials really care much about the difficulties many, many American households are having just to live at a subsistance level, let alone being able to move forward.

$174,000. Must be tough to subsist on that.