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Under the Sun
Cynthia Oi
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Congress a tough job for ordinary Joes, Garys, Colleens and Quentins
SEEMS like everybody and their brother wants the job Ed Case is walking away from. And why not? It's a pretty good gig.
The money's not bad -- a shade under $170,000 a year. If you and your colleagues feel you all deserve more -- it's so hard to keep up with the darn cost of living -- you get to give yourself a raise.
You draw great benefits, like health insurance and a respectable pension. You get a nice, furnished office with air conditioning and clean restrooms, and you don't have to fret about turning off the lights or adjusting the thermostat to cut energy costs.
Security is generally reliable, though if you don't flash ID and give the guards lip, you can be detained. Maybe not at Guantanamo, but in an embarrassing tribunal of public opinion.
Your employers give you an allowance so you can hire people to help you do stuff, like reading white papers and researching studies, to free you for more important matters, like jaw-jawing with lobbyists.
You get all the major holidays off, even the ones that have dissolved into little more than opportunities for department store sales. Your shift kind of fluctuates, but the hours you actually have to be on site are minimal, maybe three or four days a week.
Lunch breaks are solid and the workday's end usually falls before dinner. Not to say there aren't busy periods when you have only a minute to scarf down a vending-machine Snickers bar at your desk, but those are rare and more the result of the modus operandi of the institution where big decisions on important issues are left to the late night or early morning when not many of your employers are paying attention.
Anyway, the rush routinely precedes long vacations, dubbed "recesses," so you can probably sleep in and relax the next day.
The junk part is that every two years you have to quit fantasy land and return to ground zero.
That's your home state where you'll have to explain yourself to your bosses.
During the rest of your hitch, most of them are too busy, shoulders to the wheel, trying to stay ahead to take note. From time to time, some high-profile issue might pull up their heads, like the bill to lift the federal minimum wage a couple of bucks over the poverty level.
Then you'll have to tap dance about the reason you voted for the bill even though it has been yoked to unrelated matters such as tax breaks that average $1 million for each of the richest people in the country, and to others for mining companies and the timber industry to exploit public land.
You'll have to gild the bill as a benefit for tourism since it also would grant tax deductions for plane fares, hotel rooms and restaurant meals when spouses of people who travel for business go along for the ride.
You might have to concede that the deductions, which would expire in about a year, could be regarded as a bone thrown to win your vote, but you can argue that the good outweighs the bad and that in Washington, compromises -- of values and character -- are coins of the realm.
You'll have to explore the depths to find your low, and the boundaries you are willing to cross. You have to be able to slice thin sheets from your beliefs without cutting into the core.
You'll have to suffer criticism even if you're honest and sincere because -- wish that it weren't so -- the territory into which you've ventured breaks down honesty and sincerity quickly.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at
coi@starbulletin.com.