Patterson:

By: Vance Patterson | Morganton News Herald
Published: March 12, 2010

Morganton, NC --

Where is the job description for a congressman?
Why are there no job descriptions for our members of the U.S. Congress? Some will say the constitution describes what our representatives are to be doing. But how about something updated in the last 220 years with which we can hold our representatives accountable?
It occurred to me that this is one more example of how our elected officials preserve themselves from being held accountable, and that is an outrage.
What is a job description? In business a job description will include (1) the person's name, (2) job title, (3) who the person reports to, (4) a list of responsibilities, (5) a list of expectations, (6) hours to be worked each week and (7) compensation. Well, for members of Congress we know 1, 2 and 3, but what about 4, 5 and 6? Those are key components and nobody — I mean NO- body — has taken the time to lay them out. If we don't know what the standards are, how can we know when to fire our representatives for non-performance?
And, then there's No. 7compensation. Most people believe its $174,000 a year, the congressional salary. But each U.S. Representative is given an expense allowance of $1.3 million to $4.3 million per year on which to operate. That means our representative could be costing us as much as $4,174,000 a year with no accountability other than what we're told by them in those fancy, expensive mailer pieces we get — and for which we pay! There should at least be a job description, don't you think?
As a voter, I challenge each reader to come up with a job description for our congressman and submit it to this newspaper. Maybe we the people can come up with an updated version after 220 years? After all, we hired these guys.

Patterson:

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