Why are we paying these guys?

I'll admit, I don't spend a lot of time looking at US House of Representative roll calls for voting records, but last night - a particularly exciting Saturday evening, as you might guess - I found myself looking up a House vote last week.

Why was I looking? Well, there was a news article that mentioned something about prescription drugs being allowed to be imported, and the vote was 237-18 in favor. A friend of mine wanted to know how to find out who voted against it and since I have this strange compulsion about researching silly things like this, I went looking.

His problem was that although the news article was about allowing prescription drug imports from Canada, Europe and Australia (which I support), it was actually part of a big Agriculture bill that has gotten lots of press over the last few weeks because of things like subsidies and such. He wasn't looking for agriculture, he was looking for prescriptions ... but they're all lumped together because the Ag bill includes spending for the FDA. Didn't take long to find it, except for the incredibly slow speed of the government site, and there was the 237-18 vote.

What didn't occur to me when I first started looking at this incredibly lopsided vote was how obviously low it was. 237-18? That's only 255 votes! Anyone remember how many members are in the House of Representatives? It sure isn't 255 ...

So after I got him his 18 names, I went back to the roll call and looked again.

In summary:

226 Democrats & 11 Republicans voted Yay.

3 Democrats and 15 Republicans voted Nay.

13 Republicans noted that they were present but did not vote.

2 Democrats and 163 Republicans DID NOT VOTE.

Excuse me? I'm sure there are votes where Democrats have pulled something similar, so I'm not picking on the Republicans here - this just happened to be the roll call that I saw. Obviously this is a political statement, but it's a wimpy one. If they're against the bill, they should have voted against the bill. Instead, they don't want to make their constituents mad ("you voted against helping farmers and less expensive medications?") so they chose to just not vote.

That's simply not acceptable. There are valid reasons to vote against subsidies and prescription drug imports, and if they're going to vote that way, they should be expected to explain their reasoning. The media will excoriate them, no doubt about it, and their constituents will write letters and make calls, but that's OK - that's the process.

We PAY these people to REPRESENT US. Part of representing us is to actually VOTE. If the vote is scary for them, don't take the job. Period. If there are too many bills coming through, too many details, too much to possibly understand and vote with a comfortable level of understanding, then hire more staff or stop introducing so many bills or find a generally more efficient way to operate.

The simple fact of the matter is that if I hired an attorney to represent me in court, I would expect him to show up and do his job. If he decided that my case was just a little too controversial for him and didn't show up for the trial, I'd expect my money back and certainly would not continue to pay him. That is, in effect, what we're doing here - isn't it?