GOV/MIL Senate and Congressional office staff getting out of (DC) Dodge?

[Old Gray Mare]

Called my Congressmen's and Senator's offices this AM to voice my displeasure with said governing institutions in general and to voice some specific complaints. In all cases the staff I talked to were nubies. Not one new staff member had even heard of NAIS, The National Animal Identification System. USDA has found yet another new way to cram this crap down our throats by forcing cattlemen to give up branding their cattle but that is another story. My point is NAIS is one of those proposed government boondoggles that has the potential to be ranked right up there with Health Care as a new poster child for wasteful government spending. It has been beaten down time and again and none of the staff I talked to had even heard of it!

Do the staff they replaced know something the rest of us don't? Is this regular turnover or is something up? It may just have been a coincidence but two Senators and a Congressmen all having new out of the loop staff manning the phones?

 

[Lone Wolf]

OGM;

If I were unfortunate enough to be a "staff" member, I would claim ignorence too. heh

Wouldn't be far off the mark either!

lw

 

[Old Gray Mare]

The phone screeners this morning may have gotten the short straw and had to come in early on the morning after the holiday weekend. Usually they have someone who can say Yes I'm familiar with that and here is why you should be graciously thanking the Senator/Congressman for passing this (Insert House or Senate number of boondoggle, liberty stealing, food controlling, tax and price rising) bill into law. Followed by "I will pass along your comments", probably to HLS. Still it is a dot. Either they they can't keep staff (wonder where they are bugging out to?) or they need more staff to handel the increased volume of calls because the natives are getting restless and they know who will get blamed when the SHTF.

 

[mzkitty]

Congress shortens July 4th recess
Fear of default sparks urgency in debt dealing
Friday, July 1, 2011 03:06 AM
By David Lightman and Steven Thomma
McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
DispatchPolitics


WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama and Congress need to strike a debt-reduction deal by mid-July to avoid panicking financial markets, officials familiar with the talks said yesterday, as nervous senators gave up their Fourth of July recess to stay in Washington to work on an agreement.

The Obama administration thinks a deal must be reached by July 15-22 to get the legislation written and through Congress in time to avoid a default in early August, according to Democratic officials with knowledge of the talks.

The urgency came a day after the president told a news conference that lawmakers should try to resolve the impasse over how to reduce federal deficits rather than recess.

Several weeks ago, 46 Republicans urged Senate Democrats to cut the Memorial Day recess short, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, renewed the request this week to cut the Fourth of July recess short.

Senators left the Capitol yesterday afternoon and had been scheduled to return July 11; instead, they'll be back on Tuesday. House members are to return on Wednesday after an 11-day break.

Looming is an Aug. 2 deadline either to raise the nation's debt limit or face government default, which could trigger chaos in financial markets and kick the economy back into recession. Lawmakers would attach a debt-reduction agreement to that legislation.

No new debt-reduction negotiations have been scheduled, though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has invited Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to meet with Senate Democrats on Wednesday.

The Democrats said that recent negotiations with top Republicans led by Biden behind closed doors had produced a broad, very sketchy agreement to cut spending and interest payments by $480 billion over 10 years. They stressed that none of the agreements is final until the package is finished.

They have no agreement yet on discretionary spending. Obama has proposed cutting about $900 billion from those programs, and the Republicans have proposed about $1.7 trillion. One Democrat said that probably would yield agreement on at least $1trillion in cuts. A split-the-difference compromise would cut $1.3 trillion.

The flash point is over how much revenue will be in the mix. Obama has proposed about $418 billion in tax increases over 10 years, the Democrats said.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/conten...ongress-shortens-july-4th-recess.html?sid=101

 

[fairbanksb]

They were supposed to be on holiday. Maybe since the Congress is working instead they let there key staffers have their holiday.

 

[twincougars]

Called my Congressmen's and Senator's offices this AM to voice my displeasure with said governing institutions in general and to voice some specific complaints. In all cases the staff I talked to were nubies. Not one new staff member had even heard of NAIS, The National Animal Identification System.

OMG, they usurped the good name of National Association of Investigative Specialists (NAIS) of which I am a member.
http://www.pimall.com/nais/nais.j.html

OT, great spyware stuff at http://www.pimall.com/nais/

 

[night driver]

If you were in DC you would try to be out of there in July and August. Nothing special here....

 

[nharrold]

Iirc, the republicans have already signaled that they are going to cave on the issue. Some other thread here, somewhere...