The congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the so-called “SuperCommittee” that has been been given the power to propose 1.5 trillion dollars in budget cuts (and possibly other deficit reduction measures), has been chosen to represent Congress, but the members of the committee are not representative of the American people.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the median financial net worth of the committee’s members is 1.2 million dollars. Do you know anyone worth 1.2 million dollars?
Members of the committee don’t merely have a huge amount of personal wealth. Each one has also amassed a remarkable amount of political wealth – money that isn’t counted as theirs, but is at their disposal to use for their self-promotion.
The Center of Responsive Politics examined the kinds of gifts that the members of the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction have taken to add to their political wealth. Committee members have taken more than 33.5 million dollars from PACs and executives working for financial services companies.
Given that, I don’t see much reason to trust that the the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction will represent the needs of working Americans, instead of the interests of big financial services companies.
So i guess we can expect more of the same misdistribution of wealth to continue.
How nice this idea of democracy warped by crony capitalism turned out to be . . .
I would have thought that $1.2 million net worth was below average for congress. Wouldn’t a committee of the richest congressmen easily have an average net worth over $10 million?