Congress.....apparently unaware there's a recession going on

While Americans struggle to cope with the faltering economy, keep their crap jobs, and watch the federal government take a swindler's share of our income and liberty, beltway politicians are living the dream on money they seized from us.....

WASHINGTON -- Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as "codels," has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data.

Lawmakers say that the trips are a good use of government funds because they allow members of Congress and their staff members to learn more about the world, inspect U.S. assets abroad and forge better working relationships with each other.

They can't even come up with good rationalizations. Let's take a look...

-learn more about the world--if they had gone to private or home schools instead of dreadful government schools and studied history and international civics instead of learning to put condoms on cucumbers, they'd know about the world without taking a private jet around to see it.

-inspect US assets abroad--there are already people in place for that who get paid by the taxpayers already. And what US assets are there in high-brow, Paris bistros or the Galapagos Islands that need inspecting?

-forge better relationships with each other--this is just plain stupid! Why must they fly their families to Rome for the Easter weekend, like Pelosi did, in order to forge relationships when they could do it old-school like Ted Kennedy used to.....in a smoky bar with a bottle of single-malt Scotch and some drunk interns?

This is your despicable representation in Washington ladies and gentlemen, living large on your dime, while you scrounge each of your dimes to make it to the end of the month.