America's Elitists and Obamacare

America’s Elitists and Obamacare

Ever get the feeling that those people in Congress just don’t get it?

I don’t just mean they don’t get the idea of why they are there in the first place, to represent their various constituencies and to create legislation that serves the best interests of the nation. They surely don’t get that.

I mean that, for the most part, although they technically represent us, they seem different, above it all, as if they exist in another sphere, on another plane.

Every two or six years they descend to the commoners’ level to troll for votes from the democratic masses, when they rub elbows with the hoi polloi, glad-hand some few select constituents, bestow uninvited, germ-laden kisses on a few babies to demonstrate they’re just your average guys and gals, and then probably lather on the Purell and gargle Listerine after they’re ushered into their limos.

Infatuated with wealth, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “The rich are different from you and me” to his sometimes buddy Ernest Hemingway who gently corrected him with the rejoinder, “Yes, they have more money.”

Both writers were correct.

With some few exceptions, our elected leaders also have more money than the rest of us and, yes, they are different from you and me as a result.

Recently, CNBC featured a slideshow report on “The Richest Members of the US Congress” based on research conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics which determined that there were 237 millionaires in Congress, out of 435 members of the House and 100 senators: http://bit.ly/1ficst

My math-challenged brain computes that 44.3% of our D.C. representatives have a net worth above 7 figures, many vastly above 7 figures, a few well above 9 digits. Of the remaining 298 congresspeople, I think it would be fair to guesstimate . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1422)