Mike Dougherty's Blog

Pulling page program another ridiculous stunt by Congress | August 8, 2011

Just heard that John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi had agreed to end the congressional page program, which costs about $5 million per year.

The leaders of the two parties in the U.S. House cited all the jobs once performed by pages (carrying documents from one place to another, delivering phone messages to representatives, etc.) as now being unnecessary because of all the information that congressmen send and receive via their personal electronic devices.

Yes, $5 million will solve our financial problems — how many trillions of dollars are we in debt?

Many a youngster has been exposed to the excitement and noble calling of public service during their days as a page.

It seems to me that we would much better get our money’s worth from our congressmen if we kept the page system and banned our elected representatives from using PDAs and cell phones while they are on the floor of the Capitol. Better yet, why don’t we ban them from using them while they are in Washington. If they worried less about their personal Twitter accounts and what provocative photos they can send with their phones, maybe they would concentrate on what’s good for the country instead of check their poll numbers and how many friends and followers they have on their various social media sites.

We’re not electing them to be popular on the Internet, but most (on both sides of the aisle) seem to have forgotten that.

Let’s just pull the plug on the Wi-Fi service in the U.S. Capitol. How much worse a job would our congressmen do if they were forced to pay attention to their jobs?