Congress has much to answer for

August is traditionally a time for family vacations. It's a month for taking in the pleasures of summer as a leisurely reward for months of hard work on the job.

Among those taking advantage of a summer respite are members of Congress. While working people across the country cash in their one- or two-week breaks, our representatives and senators are set to embark on a five-week recess. The House already is gaveled out, and the Senate is likely to follow suit by the end of the day today.

To earn their one- or two-week paid vacations, American workers by now have put in about 155 days on the job this calendar year. In contrast, members of Congress have put in less than 80 days to earn their five-week break.

Critics of this Congress, whose numbers are swelling inversely to the plummeting approval rating of the legislative body, have taken note of the unusually light congressional work schedule this year. Borrowing a phrase from Harry Truman's 1948 campaign playbook, critics have taken to using the phrase &#8220do-nothing Congress” in reference to this group.

The label is even more appropriate now than when Truman rode it to victory. Truman's do-nothing Congress, after all, worked 108 days. For further perspective, Congress was in session for 141 days in 2005.

Not surprisingly, the limited time worked so far this year has been more significant for what did not get done than for what did. Promised lobbying reforms, for example, seem to have been forgotten, despite the high-profile scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies in government.

Additionally, while a vast majority of Americans, representing a broad demographic cross section, say they are concerned about illegal immigration, Congress responded with silence. What Americans got instead was an attempt at a &#8220compromise” that included a widely reviled amnesty provision for the estimated 8 to 10 million illegals already in the country. Both Alaska senators - Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski - supported this unpopular bill. In the House, Rep. Don Young didn't even bother to show up for the vote.

Stevens and Murkowski further thumbed their noses at popular opinion by joining the majority to reject funding for a fence at the U.S. border with Mexico.

So nearly five years after Sept. 11, while taxpayers foot the bill for a $40 billion per year Homeland Security Department, this country's borders remain frustratingly unsecure.

Congress also failed to give a needed shot in the arm to lower-income workers by refusing, for the ninth straight year, to increase the federal minimum wage. Among those earning this spartan $5.15 an hour, a full 80 percent are adults. At 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, they earn less than $11,000 per year - a paltry amount that is well below the federal poverty level of $16,600 for a family of three, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

At the same, members of Congress, desiring to not lose buying power to inflation, gave themselves their ninth raise since 1997 - $3,300 for the year, which will increase their salaries to $168,500 on Jan. 1.

To put this in perspective, a minimum wage worker, whose own real-dollar buying power is at its lowest rate since 1955, would have to work more than 16 40-hour weeks to earn the amount of the congressional pay hike.

So as Sens. Stevens and Murkowski and Rep. Young head out on their lengthy break with taxpayer-funded paychecks in hand, perhaps even to spend time in Alaska among the hard-working folks who elected them, we wonder: Just what kind of return are we getting for our money in the nation's capital?