A Day in Congress

First of all, I cannot believe how many meetings and appointments are going on in such a short amount of time, as well as the amount of topics covered in that short amount of time.  Before even getting to the schedule for the House and Senate, a section that caught my attention was labeled Convenes: 9:30 am.  This section dealt with resuming the consideration of HR2346, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations.  The reason this section really caught my attention was the fact that I actually understood the meanings of the Majority and why the bill was called HR2346.  I literally knew next to nothing about politics before this class (obviously I still don't know much but hey, for me, knowing that the Majority is the democrats is definitely a step up!)  Just knowing that because the bill started with HR, it began in the House of Representatives, made me feel more informed.  I really feel that this statement "The Republicans will control the first 30 minutes. The Majority will control the next 30 minutes. The final hour will be equally divided with senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each." makes the system appear fair.  However, just because both parties have equal time, does not mean they have equal representation.  The majority is not called the majority for no reason.

Anyways, on to the schedule for the House.  My first reaction at seeing the meetings at or around the same time, reminded me about all of the movies dealing with presidents where the characters are always like "you can have five minutes with the President".  Congressmen and women have ridiculously packed schedules.  I really do not understand when these people sleep or have any time to relax, because although their day does not start until around 9 or 10 am, and may end around 5 pm, they still have more to their job description, such as fundraising constantly and making appearances.  Furthermore, I now understand why there needs to be so many committees.  When the government is dealing with issues from eduction reform to well, meetings on the International Whaling Commission, it makes sense to have people who know education deal with education and to have people who know natural resources deal with wildlife subcommittees.  

For the Senate, once again, I cannot grasp how much and how wide of a spectrum of topics that Congress has to deal with on a daily basis.  The segment at 9:30 that dealt with Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs actually made me laugh out loud.  Obviously the subject matter was not funny, but the fact that I have never seen a sentence that large before blew me away.  I tried and tried to get trough that sentence, but honestly I have no idea what I read.  Do the senators on the committee really know everything they can in order to make an informed decision?  I feel like all people in Congress should be doing is reading and researching, which we know is not true because they have to constantly be running for office rather than completely focusing on the mass amounts of committees they are on.  

If people actually saw how crowded the schedules of Congress are, then maybe they would have a little more sympathy when it comes to their mistakes.  But hey, we have to blame someone for all the problems, right?