The U.S. Constitution sets minimum age limits for being a member of the House of Representatives, for serving as a U.S. Senator, or to be President. Otherwise a young Elvis, Mark Zuckerberg or Justin Bieber (except for the Canadian thing) might have been POTUS.

Fortunately for many successful politicians, past and present – and unfortunately for many of us citizen, taxpayer, voters – there is no intelligence test in politics. You can be dumber than a bag of hammers and win an election.

(Some years back a Virginia Senator was named Dumbest Member of Congress in a secret survey of congressional staffers. He confirmed it by holding a nationwide press conference at which he said he wasn’t.)

And you can be very intelligent and smart and still do dumb things. Take this Congress!

Please.

It has spent much if not most of the year on the campaign trail. Senators and Representatives whose job description requires them to fund, and find ways to run, the government didn’t do it. Instead of passing appropriations bills, the government (not for the first time) has been running on a series of continuing resolutions.

Anti-pork politicians have loaded up a number of still-unpassed appropriations bills with pork. Some Senators don’t want to vote on the START nuclear treaty because it is too close to Christmas???

Congress, at the urging of the White House, is moving to freeze federal salaries for two years. Maybe to cause a temporary partial government shutdown this year (no harm to feds, they will be paid and paid on time as per usual). Congress, again at the urging of the White House, is planning to reduce the inflow of dollars into the troubled Social Security system by temporarily reducing the payroll tax which partially finances benefits. The extra two percentage points in people’s pockets is designed (they hope/pray) to jump-start the economy next year so that political incumbents can sing happy-days-are-here-again in 2012.

Congress narrowly avoided approving a bill that would have given Social Security recipients a one shot, $250 payment next year. That would have been to make up for the fact that they (like federal and military retirees) won’t be getting a cost of living adjustment next month. Actually the payments were approved by a 254-134 vote, but under House rules it needed a two-thirds majority to carry. So the one-shot payments were favored by a majority, just not by a big enough majority.

Congress still talking about possible federal furloughs and eliminating up to 10 percent of all federal jobs. Yet the White House is still planning to bring “inherently governmental” jobs (now being performed by private contractors) back into government. Most of the outsourcing was done during the Clinton and Bush administrations. The Clinton team wanted to eliminate supervisory and “overhead” jobs by turning them over to the private sector. The Bush administration was delighted to continue, under the guise getting the government out of the business of business.

Because of its frequent time-outs, spring, summer, fall and election breaks, Congress may be here until the end of the year. Members (and long-suffering staffers) won’t get paid any more for the extra hours at the end of the year but there will be associated costs while they keep working. The question is who will foot that bill?

For the answer, look in the mirror.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

Nearly Useless Factoid
by Suzanne Kubota

In exploring the question of “What Did Dinosaur Meat Taste Like?“, Slate.com says the Tyrannosaurus rex probably tasted more like a hawk than like a chicken and was pretty much all dark meat. “If the king of the dinosaurs had any white meat at all,” says Slate, “it would have been in the tail, which may have been whipped around as a weapon.”

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