Before leaving for his five-week summer recess earlier this month, Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., wanted to make one thing clear: This is not a vacation. He posted a YouTube video declaring this is an “August district work period” despite what is “reported in the media.”
It’s a smart move on Heck’s part, since, according to a recent Fox News poll, just 14 percent of voters believe Congress deserves a break. That’s the same percentage of Americans who approve of the way Congress is handling its job, according to Gallup. But who’s counting?
I, too, enjoy a good working vacation. I often conduct research on mid-week snow conditions at Whitefish Mountain Resort in the winter because, you know, we write stories about it.
To help provide background to reporters on mountain snowpack levels and how they may affect water flows in area tributaries, I float rivers in the summer – often with friends who are basically experts on these sorts of things.
Last weekend, three of my newsroom staffers and I piled into a car and headed to Livingston for a Beacon alumnus’ wedding. We talked about our jobs a lot during the trip, so I should probably just write off the expenses on my taxes as a working weekend. Team building!
If none of this makes sense, that’s OK. It shouldn’t. Nor do arguments from congressmen and women trying to deflect criticism by screaming about all the barbecues they’re skipping this month to keep working.
Sure, our delegation is staying busy. Sen. Jon Tester toured hail-damaged farms in Gallatin County earlier this month. Rep. Steve Daines conducted a “jobs tour” across the state before joining other members of Congress on a trip to Israel. Sen. Max Baucus has been crisscrossing Montana – participating in a “work day” in the North Fork and joining the new head of Medicare for a meeting in Libby.
These are all commendable and it’s equally great that our representatives in D.C. are out meeting their constituents. But I imagine many of those constituents have the same question: “Why, exactly, are you not at the capitol? Because your to-do list looks pretty long.”
There’s another budget standoff looming that could effectively shut down the federal government again – this, I suppose, is not a crisis since the threat of it happening is bandied about every other month. But Congress has done so little in the first half of the year it’s hard to see them bridging their differences in time to avoid a number of crises, even after resting up for five weeks.
None of the 12 spending bills for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, have been sent to the president, who is golfing in Martha’s Vineyard. In fact, as Bloomberg reported, the House and Senate have passed about two dozen bills during the first half of this year and “most of the legislation is small potatoes,” making it one of the least productive sessions on record.
Meanwhile, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling sometime this fall. Remember that awful 2011 spectacle? The sequel could be worse and hurt the economy more. There’s also the immigration overhaul, addressing national-security leaks, government abuse and sequestration. The list is long.
Heck’s right. Congressmen and women check in with their staffers over the summer break. They glad-hand constituents, hold town hall meetings and tour businesses. And many of them deserve some down time since they work extraordinarily long hours when Congress is in session.
But it’s hard to garner much sympathy for representatives and senators stung by criticism. Perhaps it is a working vacation, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing their jobs.