Here’s what’s going on with our elected representatives in Congress. There is a slush fund in DC to pay for the harassment claims against members of congress. Sexual harassment and the like. Congress has secretly paid out $17 million bucks through this fund. It must be nice to be in congress and think you can do whatever you want. These payments can’t be kept secret.
Yesterday there was a vote about releasing the names of the members of Congress who spent the money. The vote failed. Only 65 members voted for it and another 357 voted to ‘Send it to Committee’. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have issues with that you should too.
While I realize that charges of sexual harassment don’t mean you’re guilty, if you want to use public money to make the charges go away? The public needs to know. I don’t know what else to tell ya.
If this issue is fraudulent charges from fake victims, just looking to slander a member of congress and get a big payday? Hiding the payments and the receipts is just going to compound the problem. If someone knows that all they have to do is scream sexual harassment and get a big payout? It will never end.
So. now we need to know who was spending our money. And if this is going to a committee? What’s the deadline? When do we see results? Congress cannot spend our money in secret and hide the receipts. Ever. Let’s try to re-establish that point of order asap.
Here’s more:
This article made me infuriated and made me go digging for facts on how this all started. In 1995 (when Bill Clinton was President ,go figure) this fund was sponsored by a few Republicans (who are out of office) in the House and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) in the Senate. It was introduced into the “Contract With America”,which passed unanimously in House and with one no vote (Robert Byrd) in the Senate. It was reformed in 2017 to make the Congressional member pay the money back to the Treasury. So all the time before that, the money wasn’t paid back and it was done in secret. Wow! If the american taxpayer knew that the “Contract With America” would have been voided. I am angry that this list has been sent to commitee and not released. I have a feeling you won’t see it until after the midterms (just a hunch) ,if at all. The amount of money spent has been called into question also saying that it has been inflated for political points. Judging by the dollar amounts from 2003 to 2018 $300,000 was paid out with smaller amounts in earlier years. If that’s true, either there are a ton of lawsuits (some are also for sexual discrimination) against Congressional members or the payouts have gone way up. Either way, this list needs to come to light and I hope folks like Boebert,Luna Massie and Burchett keep the heat on. Thank you for a great article ,Michael
It is maddening. Now accusations don’t make you guilty. But if you’re using OUR money? I want receipts!