When I Found Out How Members Of Congress Really Spend Their Time, I Just About Threw Up

End of the American Dream – by Michael Snyder

Did you know that many members of Congress spend three or four hours a day “dialing for dollars” in cramped call centers that both parties have set up in Washington? I promised that I would keep all of you updated on what I am learning as I run for Congress, and what I learned the other day just about had me losing my lunch. I always imagined members of Congress spending long hours in their offices working on legislation and other important matters, but the truth is that most members of Congress are little more than glorified telemarketers at this point. Winning the next election is everything for most of these Congress critters, and so they spend far more time making cold calls to potential donors than doing anything else.  

Have you ever had a politician call you up in the middle of the day begging for money? It is an absolutely disgraceful thing to do, but the truth is that money is the number one factor in determining election outcomes, and so our professional politicians have an endless appetite for it.

Every two years, more than a billion dollars is spent on congressional elections, and those that are masters at raising money just keep winning over and over again. Something desperately needs to be done to fix our fundamentally flawed system, but neither party seems to have any desire to take the money out of politics.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about the fact that the U.S. House of Representatives will only be in session for 147 days this year. But even on those days, members of Congress are not exactly spending much time doing what they were elected to do.

During an interview with 60 Minutes, U.S. Representative Rick Nolan told Norah O’Donnell that members of Congress are expected to spend about 30 hours a week “dialing for dollars” in their respective call centers…

Rep. Rick Nolan: Well, both parties have told newly elected members of the Congress that they should spend 30 hours a week in the Republican and Democratic call centers across the street from the Congress, dialing for dollars.

Norah O’Donnell: Thirty hours a week?

Rep. Rick Nolan: Thirty hours is what they tell you you should spend. And it’s discouraging good people from running for public office. I could give you names of people who’ve said, “You know, I’d like to go to Washington and help fix problems, but I don’t want to go to Washington and become a mid-level telemarketer, dialing for dollars, for crying out loud.”

This is utterly shameful, and if I end up getting elected I will never do it. In fact, I will push legislation to ban this practice.

Former U.S. Representative David Jolly was also interviewed by O’Donnell, and he admitted to her that Republican members of Congress are actually given a telemarketing script to use while making these calls…

Simply by calling people, cold-calling a list that fundraisers put in front of you, you’re presented with their biography. So please call John. He’s married to Sally. His daughter, Emma, just graduated from high school. They gave $18,000 last year to different candidates. They can give you $1,000 too if you ask them to. And they put you on the phone. And it’s a script.

In 2013, new Democratic members of Congress were given a “model schedule” for how they should be spending their time. On that model schedule, two hours a day were allocated for “committee/floor”, and four hours a day were allocated for “call time”. In other words, those members of Congress were expected to only devote two hours a day to doing the jobs they were elected to do and four hours a day to making telemarketing calls.

If we ever want to end this disgraceful system we need to take matters into our own hands.

Shortly after I announced that I was running for Congress, I was given a list of thousands of names in my district. It is the same list that other politicians are getting too. Even at this moment, people are having their dinners interrupted by desperate politicians that are “dialing for dollars”.

If this ever happens to you, write the name of that politician down and never vote for that individual again.

I have pledged not to participate in this shameful system, and if I get the chance I will work to abolish it. Yes, every campaign needs funding, but making telemarketing cold calls to people at home is not the way to do it.

In fact, these politicians are actually trained to interrupt you during lunch and dinner because those are apparently some of the best times for raising money.

And these call centers in D.C. are as bad as you are probably imagining. The following is more from former Representative David Jolly

It is a cult-like boiler room on Capitol Hill where sitting members of Congress, frankly I believe, are compromising the dignity of the office they hold by sitting in these sweatshop phone booths calling people asking them for money. And their only goal is to get $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 out of the person on the other end of the line. It’s shameful. It’s beneath the dignity of the office that our voters in our communities entrust us to serve.

Jolly is precisely correct.

Any politician that makes these sorts of calls is acting in a completely shameful manner.

If we don’t get the money out of politics, we are just going to end up with a bunch of sleazebags in Washington that spend most of their time on the phone bugging people for money.

Is that what we want?

Do we really want our laws to be made by those that can prove that they are the best telemarketers?

Nobody is supposed to talk about these things, and I suppose that this is yet another article that is going to get me into trouble.

But I don’t care. Our system is deeply broken and it needs to be fixed. Hopefully by shedding some light on these issues I have moved the ball in the right direction.

End of the American Dream

10 thoughts on “When I Found Out How Members Of Congress Really Spend Their Time, I Just About Threw Up

  1. Apparently Michael does not know just how bad things really are. If he did, he would never consider becoming part of the problem, as the problem is not solvable at the congress level. The people will solve this or it will not be solved.
    These are well paid telemarketers plus all their benefits. Glorified telemarketers, this is funny as heck, and to many folks reverence them not realizing their “reps” are cold calling donors for mula.

    Again, this cracks me up; the stupidity of the American mind.

    Michael, stick to financial articles, you can accomplish more down here with the rest of us; don’t turn yourself into a treason committed by joining the gang.

    1. Apparently Michael does not know just how bad things really are.
      Katie, I assure you that most amerikan people are “now” becoming aware of the severity of our current state of affairs. The catholic population has learned of the pedophile pope and congress, the media is a circus gone insane and there are lots of household conversations going on now about what is real. It is about to go live and all we got is chump.

      1. “Katie, I assure you that most amerikan people are “now” becoming aware of the severity of our current state of affairs.”

        most?

        That makes you sound insane.

        1. Cynicles, yes, most, is quite a stretch as far as my experience shows.

          Sure would be nice it it was MOST.

  2. “If this ever happens to you, write the name of that politician down and never vote for that individual again.”

    BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! WE have elections for seats that high?!

    Anyone believing in such poppycock is either delusionally stupid, insane or shilling.

    This is just a perc for aiding the smoke and mirrors show, and sweetens the pot for the paedos in office.

  3. I agree that money in politics is a real problem — one of the most serious we have, in fact. But honestly, I think I’d rather have members of Congress spending time fundraising on the phone than actually coming up with new laws. We need more laws in this country like we need more venereal disease.

  4. “If this ever happens to you, write the name of that politician down and never vote for that individual again.”

    I see Mikey still believes in the voting system that has been proven to be a fraud time and time again.

    “Every two years, more than a billion dollars is spent on congressional elections, and those that are masters at raising money just keep winning over and over again.”

    Sorry, but it doesn’t take money to win an election. It’s all about WHO you know and who can help you rig it to win. Money is merely for their retirement investments and bonuses in case they lose.

  5. So then, if they spend only two hours a day on the floor and 4 hours making phone calls on average, when do they all have time to read, write and review 1000 page bills that always appear on their desk overnight each week, especially after a false flag just happens to occur?

    Hmm…..I wonder….. Could it be that they don’t read or write any of them and that some corporate entity does it all by creating an unlikely terror incident that relates to that bill and then pays to have them pass it AFTER the incident has occurred in the form of a “generous donation”?

    I think so!

    Of course that’s just worse case scenario. Most of the time the corporations just have them try to pass a bill that they created by giving them a “generous donation”.

    Politicians don’t care who they hurt or where they get their money from as long as they can increase their ego and retirement investment. Hence, a politician’s lifelong marriage to Wall Street and company.

Join the Conversation

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*