House members have been in Washington for 56% of all non-holiday weekdays -- essentially, fewer than three days a week. Senators have walked into the Capitol for 61% of weekdays.
The weeks are not just shorter, but consistently so. The Senate did not have a single five-day work week in Washington for the first seven months of the year. The House had two.
Of course some have tried to dress this up as you know, more time to speak with "the folks":
The office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, which schedules the calendar in that chamber, defended the time away from Washington.
"It's critical for members to have district work periods to hear from their constituents on a variety of matters," said Cantor spokeswoman Megan Whittemore, "including chronic unemployment, the next steps toward addressing immigration and our debt crisis."
Which, as you have long known via moi, is complete bullshit:
9) I love when politicians say that they’re going to go home to “talk to my constituents.” Really? Has anyone ever seen these people just wandering around, getting thoughts from the people that voted them into office? I don’t know anyone who knows anybody that’s been like “...yeah, so at Arby’s our Senator walked in and we had a long talk....” So far it seems that the only people these guys talk to in their home states are their families and hookers. Yet they talk on tv as if they’re going home and literally setting up a box at an intersection and talking to “the folks.” The last politician to ride in a car without a roof and genuinely tried to make eye contact with “the folks” had his brains sprayed all over Jackie Kennedy’s lap, and don’t think for a second I didn’t spend the last ten minutes sitting here trying to think of a joke finishing with “sprayed all over Jackie Kennedy’s lap.”
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