When I went to pick up my mail today, I was sure glad to see a trash can within reach. I hate bringing junk mail home with me. It just doesn't seem right that I'm forced to, in some cases, pay for mail I didn't solicit or want in the least. Today I had quite a handful.
Then I get home and read the paper to see that our looking-out-for-our-best-interest-lawmakers are spending our money sending us junkmail. This is to the tune of $20.3 million dollars a year. They call it government mailings but it's plain and simple taxpayer dollars used for a government version of junk mail.
Some of this included meeting announcements, tips on car care and job interviews, surveys on public policy and just plain bragging of all the grand stuff they have been doing during their term in office. This included 116 million pieces with many of them glossy photos filled with the latest pictures of roads and bridges, etc. brought into their districts.
I mean do we really need advice on keeping our car properly maintained to improve mileage sent by Rep Tim Murphy, R-Pa? How about Rep David Dreier, R-CA offering tips on home improvements? I guess I'd rather read about home improvements and tips from Heloise than a congressman who is just trying to make himself look good by getting his name out there at our expense. It seems to me just another way to circumvent advertising costs.
A dozen House members spent more than $133,000 each to send 9.8 million pieces of mailings. The total cost? $1.8 million.
Who reads this stuff? Anybody? I mean honestly?
I'm not happy to say that out of the 64 House members with at least $100,000 in taxpaper-funded mailings 42 were Republicans and 22 were Democrats. That is if you can believe the liberal newspaper. Lately, I'm not sure what to believe. But this spending of $20.3 million on junk mail that nobody reads is pretty unbelievable.
And here I am, throwing junk mail into the trash right there at the mailboxes.
Another case of our hard earned taxpayer money at work doing nothing but filling trash cans all over the country.