No, this is not how you "Fix Congress." [View all]

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

It's bad enough when I get RW memes from my clueless Teabagger relatives. But to read them here on DU is both depressing and frustrating.

First off, despite the popularity of a graphic meme recently posted here and on every RW page on facebook, congresspersons do not "get paid" FOR LIFE. Nor, is that effectively true as a result of their supposedly outrageous pensions.

Debunking on Snopes

Congressional Pay and Perks

Retirement Benefits for Members of Congress

There is a discussion to be had about the relatively crappy pay of soldiers deployed in war zones and the pittance the average senior dependent on Social security receives in comparison to the pay members of congress get. But that argument is not served by headlining it with blatantly false claims.

This ties in with an email that's been circulating since at least 2009, most recently entitled This is How You Fix Congress, or similar, that now even tries to legitimize itself by claiming to be by Warren Buffet [sic] It too is filled with misinformation and is a favorite of the RW.

The email is clearly meant feed the flames of (often quite justified toward certain members) anger at Congress, but, more importantly imho,to reassert the "both sides are to blame" meme that keeps the Rs from accruing their full share of blame for the dysfunction caused in large part by their obstructionism (Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem.)

It also, perhaps more importantly, tries to divert our anger away from the massive amounts of money going to corporations and Wall Street profiteers and focus it on a relatively small amount of money paid to a group of private sector employees.

The email rants about how we must put and end to various abuses by congresscritters related to pay raises, tenure, health care, etc., and insists that we must institute the proposed "Congressional Reform Act of 2011" to do so.

As with most RW propaganda emails, it's filled with inaccuracies. Yet, I've seen it or parts of it posted and promoted here on DU.

Here are links to a few sources which debunk much of what the email claims needs fixing:

Fact Check.org's debunking of the "Congressional Reform Act"

USNews.com's article, Warren Buffett and the Mythical "Congressional Reform Act"

I can't post the articles in full here on DU due to copyright, but you can in a response to anyone who sends you that ridiculous teamail. Here are a few excerpts:

-Congressmen do not have "tenure." They run for re-election. If you don't like your congressman, vote him or her out.

-Currently members of Congress have the same health insurance options as millions of other federal employees and retirees and their families. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program gives them a wide choice of private insurance plans. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 51 million persons in the U.S. had no health insurance at all in 2009 — just under 17 percent of the population. (The author may have been laboring under the false impression that Congress somehow "exempted" itself from the new health care law, a bit of nonsense that was based on a number of misrepresentations that we addressed last year.

-Congress has not been voting pay raises for itself. Since 1994, Congress has gone without a pay raise nine times (four of those times occurring in the past six years.) ~the article is from March 2012~

Sorry to those of you who've already read my rants about this in a previous thread, but most haven't and I, obviously, believe it's an issue that deserves attention regarding these particular points as well as in general. Let's do our best not to buy into and spread misinformation, especially when it comes in the form of a Tea Party meme.