Campaigning on our dime

Would you continue to employ someone at a six-figure salary to perform an important service for your company, providing them with great benefits and perks, if they seldom showed up for work and spent the majority of their time and energy seeking another job? I think not. In the real world of business, that would be suicide.

Yet, millions of people in Arizona, New York and Illinois continue to have their U. S. senators, who have sworn to represent them in Congress, grossly neglecting the business entrusted to them by their constituents. It is an overwhelming drain on the time and energy of anyone who runs for president. Truly, there can be little time or energy left for any other endeavor.

Therefore, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and others are all guilty of doing a lousy job in their current office. They cannot be faithful in their current duties, and yet they all seek to be elected to the highest office in the land!

There ought to be a law that any congressman who campaigns for another job must resign and be replaced by someone who will be there to represent the interests of the people of their state full-time. Moreover, they should be allowed a limited number of sick days and personal days while they are in session. If they go over their allotment, their pay should be docked.

Better yet, they should be paid only a per diem as they were prior to 1814. It was $6 a day back then; $600 a day should suffice for our current times. If the members of Congress truly put the interests of their constituents ahead of their own personal ambitions, they would pass such a law.

Obviously, McCain, Clinton and Obama do not. They are all unfaithful to the sworn duties of their current office. None of them, or others of the same ilk, is worthy to be president.

Do not hold your breath waiting for such a law to be passed. The only entity that could pass such a law is the very Congress that has been feathering its nest all these years! We have foxes guarding our hen house. We put them in office. Only we can take them out.

John Hanson
Bristol, Va.