Report: Almost half the members of Congress are millionaires

As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.

[Equality for all]

How can this be? Seven of ten of our rich congress members are democrats. Isnt this the party that believes that we should all be equal, live in the same type of homes, drive the same energy efficient cars. Capitalism is unfair and immoral isn't it? Then how come Franken and Oberstar have so much more wealth than the rest of their peers. I think they should have to REDISTIBUTE their wealth so they can be EQUAL to their peers.

[voiceofminnesota]

Well I guess I should not be surprised that things are as they always have been. The rich (we don't really care because it doesn't even affect us) governing the poor. It's been going on since the first "only the rich land owners allowed" continental congress. Proof positive that money is power. How convenient that the bail out money just happened to go to companies where the congress people were heavily investing...funny how things just seem to work out when you are rich and powerful, because I'm sure it wasn't anything they did.

[say what]

Equality for all wrote:

How can this be? Seven of ten of our rich congress members are democrats. Isnt this the party that believes that we should all be equal, live in the same type of homes, drive the same energy efficient cars. Capitalism is unfair and immoral isn't it? Then how come Franken and Oberstar have so much more wealth than the rest of their peers. I think they should have to REDISTIBUTE their wealth so they can be EQUAL to their peers.

You don't get it do you? They want to make everyone equal, it's just that "some will be more equal than others!"

They don;t want to spend their own money to make things fair and even - at least not when they can use OUR money for that. Here's the funniest part - do you remember Millionare Franken getting all teary-eyed and telling us if wasn't for his union he probably wouldn't have been able to have health insurance?

[Dombrowski]

Report: Almost half the members of Congress are millionaires

Anyone with a clue already knew this. But if we are being honest and based on the information supplied in this story.... who's the real party of the rich? Sure smells...I mean looks like it would be the DEMOCRATS. And if Crap and Tax gets past... members of that same party along with $100 Million Dollar member Al Gore would become even richer. And I thought they were all about the poor and less fortunate.... NOT!

[Very Curiious]

How can a career political hack who's only job outside of politics was as a language teacher accumulate over $5 mil since 1975? Can anyone say "on the take"?

[to hard]

Yes...no wonder these people are clueless as to the needs of the middle class....get rid of them all and start over.

[Dombrowski]

past... OOPS..Brain Fart.

[Thanks Libs]

Democrats, party of the rich hypocrites who loot from government and corporate welfare. And all the other types of welfare too.

[Wonder]

It is confirmed, Ellison is less than a Zero.

[King Tut]

That is why so many don't bother voting!!!
Hey, what a concept said the money man!!!

[Cant be So]

say what wrote:

<quoted text>
You don't get it do you? They want to make everyone equal, it's just that "some will be more equal than others!"
They don;t want to spend their own money to make things fair and even - at least not when they can use OUR money for that. Here's the funniest part - do you remember Millionare Franken getting all teary-eyed and telling us if wasn't for his union he probably wouldn't have been able to have health insurance?

Ahhhh I get it now.. Thanks for 'splaining to me how things work! Just like a turd in the tank Franken rises to the top. LOL

[ISRW]

I'm sort've astonished it's only 40%. How can anyone afford to run a campaign without independent wealth behind them? It's daunting to consider.

[EdSed]

voiceofminnesota wrote:

Well I guess I should not be surprised that things are as they always have been. The rich (we don't really care because it doesn't even affect us) governing the poor. It's been going on since the first "only the rich land owners allowed" continental congress. Proof positive that money is power....

Very interesting, but you think you have problems? Our Upper House, The Lords, still has 92 hereditary peers and 26 Bishops in it.
Most of the members are mad or foreign (considered to be the same thing in England).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mp...

One or two look almost criminal..
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/politics/...

There is talk of reform and of changing the name to ‘Senate’, but we never get around to doing it. I favour abolition of the upper house altogether.

Theoretically, The Monarch (Dear Liz) has to physically open parliament as there is no written constitution, only legal precedent dating back hundreds of years. Traditionally, the assembly only becomes a Parliament with law-making powers when the Monarch declares Parliament open. I wonder if anyone knows what to do if she is not well that day? Until the state opening, it is legally just a meeting of several hundred private citizens and Lords with no more legal standing than a 1,000 teenagers at a rave (and arguably, no more ability to govern.)
http://www.parliament.uk/faq/lords_stateopeni...

The people of England are not mad. They just live there.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index...
The UK betters you by this criterion,
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/s...
but you will always win in the end. You have all the money.

Mr Biden’s achievement looks impressive, considering he has so little personal wealth.

[DizzyOne]

How did Oberstar get so rich? All he's ever done was be a politician, and as far as I know the salary now is $174,000. He keeps a place in Minnesota and also in very expensive DC. Should use up most of that salary to live. Could it be the millions come from special interest groups (lobbyists) paying for his vote? Just asking.
It seems to me that there are a lot of people in congress that never had a high paying job, get to congress and lo and behold, they become millionaires.

[Rooster Griffin]

DizzyOne wrote:

How did Oberstar get so rich? All he's ever done was be a politician, and as far as I know the salary now is $174,000. He keeps a place in Minnesota and also in very expensive DC. Should use up most of that salary to live. Could it be the millions come from special interest groups (lobbyists) paying for his vote? Just asking.
It seems to me that there are a lot of people in congress that never had a high paying job, get to congress and lo and behold, they become millionaires.

You are absolutely right. I will do write in candidates for now on because my vote can't be bought!

[Truth]

Al Frankin, Inc.. is one and done. But he should still pay his taxes.

[Ride to Live]

Well if brother Ellison is claiming a negative income, then apparently the butt monkeys in Congress don't have to include the cost of health care in their tax returns. And the comedian, the jokes on Minnesota and the poor schmucks that voted for the clown. By the way, try contacting any of those pigs in congress, all you get is a form letter expressing the members thanks for taking an interest in their work.

[Porkulus]

It is "becoming harder by the day to take the Democrats seriously as the party of the common man," writes columnist Daniel Henninger. "The party's primary sources of support have become trial lawyers and Wall Street financiers. It is becoming a party run by a new class of elites who make fast money--$25 million for 30 days work on a movie, millions (even billions) winning lawsuits against doctors...millions to do arithmetic for a business merger."
Obviously both parties have their fat cats, but Federal Election Commission data show that many of the very wealthiest political players are now in the Democratic column. Today's most aggressive political donors by far are lawyers--who donated $98 million dollars to 2004 political candidates as of June.(By comparison, the entire oil and gas industry donated $13 million.) And rich lawyers do indeed tilt strongly Democratic: 71 percent of their contributions went to Democrats, 29 percent to Republicans.
John Kerry is in many ways a perfect embodiment of the Democratic Party's takeover by wealthy elites. Experts describe his genealogy as "more royal than any previous American President." There is a long line of blue blood and inherited funds in his family, and his life has been anything but typically American: Mom was an heiress summering at her family's resort estate in France when she met dad, a Phillips Andover/Yale/Harvard Law School alum who was passing his own summer of 1937 in France "as an apprentice in a sculptor's studio." John's early boyhood was spent in a grand house outside Boston bought with inherited money. At age ten he was packed off to a fancy boarding school in Switzerland, and "for the next seven years of his life, this would become routine: His parents would send him off to boarding school and he would adapt anew to a world of competitive boys from wealthy, privileged families," as Kerry's Boston Globe biographers summarize.
Kerry spent his high school years at St. Paul's prep school, with a rich aunt paying the bills. He described himself at that point as being "from Oslo, Norway" (where his father was then posted as a diplomat). At St. Paul's and then Yale, Kerry whirled through hoity-toity circles with Auchinclosses and Bundys and trust-funders of all sorts, and when it came time for marrying, he showed the darnedest luck at finding true loves with true money. His first wife was worth $300 million; his second is a billionaire.
Between heiresses, Kerry had to live on his own earnings, and the results were not pretty. His spending on high life exceeded his income to the point of functional bankruptcy. But most of his life has been grand: hundred-dollar haircuts by Christophe, Old Master paintings, and expensive toys of all sorts. His five current houses, one more achingly exclusive than the next--Beacon Hill, Georgetown, Nantucket, Fox Chapel, Sun Valley--could keep a producer for "MTV Cribs" filming and looking up synonyms for "fabulous" for most of a year. Yet of course politically, Kerry is a man of the left. National Journal rates his record the most liberal in the U.S. Senate (John Edwards is tied for second).

[Porkulus]

Equality for all wrote:

How can this be? Seven of ten of our rich congress members are democrats. Isnt this the party that believes that we should all be equal, live in the same type of homes, drive the same energy efficient cars. Capitalism is unfair and immoral isn't it? Then how come Franken and Oberstar have so much more wealth than the rest of their peers. I think they should have to REDISTIBUTE their wealth so they can be EQUAL to their peers.

The term "limousine liberal" doesn't adequately capture how disconnected Democrats like John Kerry (and Jay Rockefeller, and Barbara Streisand, and Jon Corzine--there are now many such) are from everyday American life. They are more like "Learjet liberals," who literally pronounce their poxes on oil executives and cattlemen from leather sofas floating at 15,000 feet inside their personal jets (which consume 1,200 gallons of fuel every time they streak their enlightened owner to an Idaho skiing weekend or Cape sailing jaunt).

[merle]

Yea, Congress is filled with millionaire plutocrat democrat elitists who wish to shove healthcare down our throats like grain down the gullets of Strassburg geese, while they exempt themselves and widen their philacteries, as Pharasies are wont to do.