Report: "Wealth Gap between" Members of Congress and Americans "Growing Quickly"

Congress might not be solving the nation's problems but at least they are using their time to enrich themselves at our expense. So it isn't just greedy Wall St. bankers and CEOs that are seeing their wealth skyrocket, so are politicians. Which makes since they are all tied together. We think that we are electing leaders to serve us but they are in fact looking out for themselves. Public service has become a country club. And it ain't limited to Congress, Presidents are using their positions to become millionaires. The Clintons and Barack Obama have become millionaires after occupying the White House. The reason they can get away with it is because money rules politics, not ideas or ability. Additionally, someone elected to Congress is essentially in office for life. They are almost guaranteed re-election. So, in other words, they don't give a damn about what you and I think. The politicians know they can get away with it because we don't do anything about it:

Capitol Hill millionaires. That group has grown in recent years to include nearly half of all members of Congress — 250 in all — and the wealth gap between lawmakers and their constituents appears to be growing quickly, even as Congress debates unemployment benefits, possible cuts in food stamps and a “millionaire’s tax.”

[...]Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the “1 percenters” denounced by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the last six years, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group.

[...]What is clear is that members of Congress are getting richer compared not only with the average American worker, but also with other very rich Americans.

While the median net worth of members of Congress jumped 15 percent from 2004 to 2010, the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans remained essentially flat. For all Americans, median net worth dropped 8 percent during that period, based on inflation-adjusted data from Moody’s Analytics.

Going back further, the median wealth of House members grew some two and a half times between 1984 and 2009 in inflation-adjusted dollars, while the wealth of the average American family has actually declined slightly in that same time period, according to data cited by The Washington Post in an article published Monday on its Web site.

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