Can a Senator do his job as a legislator if he never show up for work? Over the past 14 months John Kerry has continued to receive his $158,000 salary even though he has been continually absent:
During his run for the presidency, Kerry has missed every one of the 22 roll call votes in the Senate this year and was absent for 292, or 64 percent of the roll call votes last year, according to a Herald review of Senate records.
That means the Massachusetts senator has been away from his post in the Senate chamber for at least 128 days over the past 14 months.
Kerry isn’t the only one. John Edwards has has also missed every roll call this year and skipped 178 (39%) of the votes last year. Federal law requires the Secretary of the Senate and the Chief Administrative Officer of the House to deduct the pay of congress members who are absent without just cause (and, no, running for President is not a valid excuse). Obviously both candidates should refund part of their salaries.
But more importantly than the money is the fact that the people of Massachusetts and North Carolina have not been properly represented by the legislators they elected. This, in my opinion, is a flaw in our electoral system, though Kerry might beg to differ.
Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan said the senator has fulfilled his legislative obligations fully while on the campaign trail by maintaining regular contact with his staff in Washington D.C. and Massachusetts.
``In the age of telecommunications, Sen. Kerry is in daily contact with his chief of staff,'' Meehan said. ``Voting is just one small part of being a U.S. senator.''
Voting is just a small part of being a Senator? What do they consider the big part to be? Hobnobbing with lobbyists? Raising funds for re-election? It’s not as if Kerry was personally responding to letters from his constituents. He has staffers to those types of duties. In fact, voting is one of the few activities that his staff can’t do for him.
Kerry’s excuse is that his vote wouldn't have changed any outcomes on the issues he missed. Besides being a rather anti-democratic excuse, it is also irrelevant. He wasn’t elected to 'change the outcomes" on particular votes. He was elected to represent the people of his state. When he fails to vote he fails to do his job.
To be fair, we can’t really expect Kerry to run a successful Presidential campaign while fulfilling all of his legislative duties. So what is the solution? Replace any legislators who want to run for higher office -- at least temporarily.
According to the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, the states have the right to fill such temporary vacancies:
When vacancies happen in the representation of any state in the Senate, the executive authority of such state shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, that the legislature of any state may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
Though the Amendment doesn’t specify what constitutes a 'vacancy" the U.S. Code does:
The time for holding elections in any State, District, or Territory for a Representative or Delegate to fill a vacancy, whether such vacancy is caused by a failure to elect at the time prescribed by law, or by the death, resignation, or incapacity of a person elected, may be prescribed by the laws of the several States and Territories respectively.
A clause should be added to this code that allows the states to provide a temporary replacement for any legislator that is running for President. This would allow the Senator or Congressman to concentrate on their campaign and still have a job to return to if they are not elected. And, more importantly, it would provide the people of a state the proper representation they are due in Congress.
1
What's wrong with democracy?
The citizens of Massachusetts can decide whether they're satisfied with Kerry.
Regarding representation, the official Senate Roll-Call Vote list reports 35 roll-call votes as of today. Only a handful of these were decided by margins of fewer than at least 40 votes; many passed with no opposition. Only two were decided by margins smaller than the number of non-voting Senators. Only one failed to gain the Democrats' favored outcome (and not by one vote). Thus, there is not a single case in which Kerry's vote could have made a difference, and only one case in which the non-voting Democrats together could have made a difference. Kerry is representing his constituents - they are getting the outcomes they (presumably) prefer. Simply casting a vote so there is a vote recorded seems of little moment. And, again, if they care so much about that, they can make their views known.
As for what a Senator does, a great deal of politics is deal-making, not the mechanical act of casting the vote. That is something the Senator's staff cannot do; lobbyists and other Senators do not want to negotiate with a staffmember, and a staffmember does not have the clout to demand results or twist arms. How much of this Kerry does, or how effective it is, is hard to say, but it's also something that his constituents can decide for themselves.
If we're going to tally how many votes Democratic Senators missed, we might also note how many days Bush spends on his endless vacations - something like 300 to date, in barely three years. (The average working American gets 16 days' vacation per year.) If we're going to dock Senate pay, we might also dock 30% of the President's pay.
Finally, your suggestion of a temporary replacement, with "retreat rights" for the returning candidate, is interesting. It could work, though it would be expensive in the House (where seats can only be filled by election, not appointment). I'm still not sure it's a problem that demands a solution. It would also encourage a lot more "trial balloon" candidacies if marginal candidates knew they did not have to choose between one office and the other - which may not be a good thing.
posted on 03.10.2004 2:12 PM2
Kevin:
The average working American gets 16 days' vacation per year.
Is it really that high? I get 10 (goes up to 15 next year), and that's pretty typical.
Joe:
One question I've had, and haven't seen answered, is whehter this is specifically a Democratic problem. I would assume that when John McCain campaigned for president in 2000, he missed a fair number of votes also; that said, I can't find any statistics, so I don't know for sure.
I frequently see this spun as a partisan issue, even though I doubt it truly is one.
posted on 03.10.2004 2:45 PM3
Joe also doesn't give us any context -- how do those numbers compare to the average Senator? A LOT of the Senate business is rote in nature. Votes on Puppies are Nice Amendment, etc. There is also a long standing tradition of a member form the opposite party abstaining on a vote when a member of the other party can not be there. Finally, the only real question here is whether or not Kerry and Edwards have made votes that were not rote and where they did not have the agreement of a Republican Senator or other senator opposing their vote to abstain.
posted on 03.10.2004 3:22 PM4
Given his voting record, it's best for the republic that he shows up as seldom as possible.
posted on 03.11.2004 12:08 PM