Its been a while for me, but I remember when I was in grade school, we all looked forward to recess. A time to run and play in the school yard, chase the girls, etc, etc, etc. All 435 members of our House of Representatives are now on "Recess", ahead of their schedule, which originally had them abandoning their jobs on the 8th. Of course a good number of those people are headed back to their home state to re-apply for their job, but without addressing the nearly 20% of Californians who have no work at all right now, I can't help but think of the other 30% who are under employed, making less than they should, just so they can feed their families. I can't help but think about how a 5 week "recess" would do wonders for them to be able to take care of things at home, or apply for better jobs, clean up their resume, or pick up some side work to augment their income. Unfortunately for the rest of American's, we don't get recess to better our employment situation. At a minimum congressional salary of $174,000 a year, we are paying $75 million a year, just for the house of representatives. That doesn't take into account their pensions(they are vested after 5 years, fully vested after 20) or their Cadillac health benefits, or their large staffs, many members of which make as much as they do. We have certainly come a long way from the original Congressional payment schedule, where Benjamin Franklin felt congressmen should not receive a salary at all for their work. In fact, until 1855, congressmen received only 6$ a day for their work, and ONLY for the days congress was in session. In light of all this, it is no wonder they went on recess without voting to prevent an across the board tax increase on the rest of us. If the rest of Americans(average salary of ~50k a year) don't pay more in taxes, how are they going to pay themselves what they deserve for working half a year? What, are they just going to print the money?(Don't answer that). Considering only one in five Americans are happy with the job they are doing, perhaps a good strategy for making government more fiscally responsible is an across the board pay cut for members of congress, maybe something to the tune of 15-30%. Now I know there are those of you out there who will respond to this post by saying, "Hey, let em take recess, at least when they are at recess, they aren't f*cking us over like they have been for quite some time now." Fear not, they will be back in November, many of them angry about having been handed their walking papers. Those will be the ones hanging about the work place after having been fired, seeing how they can get a little payback since they can't be fired twice. Hopefully, the damage will be minimal since the number of working days in November is small due to Veterans day and Thanksgiving, and the nearly month long Christmas recess starts around December 15th. Then again, angry royals do some pretty petty sh*t. [video=youtube;nTM7r4fua08]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTM7r4fua08[/video]