Rich's response to Steve Chabot's use of U.S. Congress floor time to congratulate the Elder High School baseball team for a year-2000 state championship. The team deserves praise, but not on the floor of Congress. Steve put this item on the League of Women Voters dnet.org candidate information web site as an issue in the 2000 election year. Steve had nothing more important to say, it seems. Wasted time continued to be a big problem in both branches of Congress over the past twelve years. Fire incumbents to make full use of legislative time. Fire Congress. 

As a long-time viewer of C-Span I am amazed by the cumulative time wasted in the US Congress by congratulations on sports conquests by high school, college and professional sports teams. By tributes to retiring coaches, community leaders, and other personal enthusiasms and pet associations of various Congressional representatives. Very few of the people we elect to Congress seem aware of wasting time that could go toward debate of the bills and amendments before Congress on the actual business of the Congress. The funerals of various dignitaries and current or past members of Congress should not be an official occasion of wasted hours on the U.S. House floor either. Those should be private not public displays of grief.

Not one Honorable Representative should waste the time of 435 representatives with minor local news stories. There is business enough left undone at the end of the legislative year without frivolous waste of limited legislative time. Maybe we could avoid huge lobbyist-friendly omnibus bills that have amassed at the end of the Congressional term each year for the past several years. We spend or misspend the publics' money within those bills without the benefit of debate or amendment. More respect should be shown for the hard work represented by public money.

Send E-mails or snail mail about the exploits of your heroes if you must. But save the time of the U.S. Congress for the business of the people. If you see no useful task to be accomplished in the far town of DC, then stay home and we will send someone who sees a purpose in Congressional business.

Respect the seven generations that came before you and the seven generations that will come after you. It is not enough to merely respect our "elders" of today.