I’ll finally present my thoughts on the length of my California ballot in Part 4, two weeks from today.
If you did not read the first two blogs in this series, here are links to each.
I recommend you take a few minutes to read as background for this post.
As I write this post, Congress and the President are “negotiating” which version of border security will be in the budget. Chances are there will be another period of Federal Government shut down. See Part 2 for my feelings on that!
When the Constitution was drafted and ratified, if there was any thought given to “career politician,” it was not in the minds of most of those who ran for either the House of Representatives of the Senate.
There are scores, perhaps hundreds, of examples of candidates running for the House or Senate intending to champion a cause, then returning to their careers.
Figure 1 and 2 are from Congressional Careers: Service Tenure and Patterns of Member Service, 1789-2019. It’s clear that for nearly 100-years, the idea of running for more than one term in Congress was not the norm. Since 1947, the average number of incumbents seeking reelection is about 85%.
There are many excuses, I suspect that those seeking reelection time after time after time after time… use the term reasons, but I’ll stick with excuses, for this phenomenon. I offer these are options.
Perks of being a member of Congress have escalated. High salaries (average is $174,000 per year),budgets for travel, support personnel, and other expenses, and exemption from Social Security are the main ones. Although the perks are not as perky as many believe (some of my research surprised me), the perks are good. See PolitiFact – Ohio for some of the misconceptions.
Other things to consider in why there are career politicians include.
The House of Representatives has averaged 138 “legislative days” a year since 2001, according to records kept by the Library of Congress. That’s about one day of work every three days, or fewer than three days a week. The Senate was in session an average of 162 days a year over the same time period.
Vacation Time
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 76 percent of private industry workers (who make up 84.7 percent of all workers) receive paid vacation days. After one year of employment, employers granted these workers 10 days of paid vacation, on average.
There are a total of 261 working days in the 2019 calendar year. Members of Congress work 53% of those days. Senators work 62%. Subtracting 20 days from the 261, means the workers averaging close to the most paid vacation days still work 92% of those days. Even though congress time off isn’t “paid time” in the manner of most vacation time,
The mean household income was $79,263 in the United States in 2015. Members of Congress average $174,000.
Bottom Line.
Members of congress average $1,160/workday. The average USA workforce member averages $304/workday.
Seems like there might be some desire to become a career politician…
if…
you have the right background!
Members of Congress By Profession
So who are these people and what did they do? There are the obvious non-politicians: actor and President Ronald Reagan*, Songwriter Sonny Bono was one-half of Sonny and Cher, one of the most popular rock duos of the 1960s and early 1970s, author and talk-show host Al Franken, who was best known for his role on “Saturday Night Live.” Who can forget professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura, whose political resume ended at governor of Minnesota?
*Ronald Reagan's background as a repesentative for the actor's guild provided far more preparation for the offices of Governor of California and President than I thought he had. I encourage you to visit his Presidential Library in Thousand Oaks, CA if you have a chance. I suspect visiting any Presidential Library would be of value.
*Ronald Reagan's background as a repesentative for the actor's guild provided far more preparation for the offices of Governor of California and President than I thought he had. I encourage you to visit his Presidential Library in Thousand Oaks, CA if you have a chance. I suspect visiting any Presidential Library would be of value.
But what about the common members of Congress? Where did they come from? What were their professions?
Business and Law
Data compiled regularly by the Washington, D.C., publication Roll Calland the Congressional Research Service have found that the most common professions held by burgeoning members of the House and Senate are in law, business and education.
In the 113th Congress, for example, nearly a fifth of the 435 House members and 100 senators worked in education, either as teachers, professors, school counselors, administrators or coaches, according to the Roll Calland Congressional Research data.
There were twice as many lawyers and businessmen and businesswomen. (Increased size is my editorial license.)
That’s all for this post. I recommend reading the whole article Members of Congress by Profession. It’s quite a list.
The next post in this series is Almanac. Why my California ballot is soooo large. Part 4 - The ANSWER!
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