Ripple in Stillwater has been keeping track:
Michele Bachmann has failed to show up for work in Congress 58.7 percent of the time since July 1, missing 145 out of 247 roll call votes. The last time Bachmann even cast a vote was August 1. If we were to pay our goldbricking congresswoman on a pro rata basis for the time she was actually working for us in the past three months, we would dock her $174,000 annual paycheck $25,534.50.
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Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Eh, this is not enough information. What is the median rate of no-shows for roll call for congresscritters? What is the median rate for congresspeople that are involved in an active primary campaign? I’m not so sure this is anything remarkable… We could argue that it’s crappy anyway, but if it’s not unusual behavior, then it’s not fair to single out Bachmann. (Especially when there are so so so many other things to single her out for…)
Okay, the average miss rate is 4%, as compared to Bachmann’s 58.7%. That’s, uh, pretty bad.
However, during his 2008 presidential run, McCain’s miss rate spiked to ~65%. So this is not unprecedented.
I am having trouble finding really comprehensive information here, but it does appear that if you are NOT campaigning, a miss rate above 10% or so is pretty abysmal. Double digit miss rates while campaigning don’t seem to be so bad, but as near as I can tell — and I don’t feel I have enough information to say this definitively, so take it with a grain of salt — it looks like a >50% miss rate is still unusually shitty even while campaigning.
So I take it back, it is totally fair to single out Bachmann for this. The original article did need more information in order to make that case though…
Okay, more info:
http://www.eyesonobama.com/blog/content/id_31898/title_McCain-Has-Worst-Attendance-Record-in-Washington/
It looks like Obama had an even worse attendance record than Bachmann, when he was campaigning, but he was >98% attendance prior to that.
So I dunno. Still a tough call…
Jamessweet: I see you answered yourself before I had a chance! Yes, the rate of voting is very ner 100% for members who are not sick or otherwise away alot.
McCain was in the Senate so the comparison isn’t valid. They have a different system.
To be fair, they do lose more when they are campaigning. Yes, a miss rate of even 5% in the house when you are not campaigning is bad. Many members miss only a couple/few votes all year and hopefully only the stupid ones (about 20% or so are irrelevant).
Obama was in the Senate, not the house. Again, different.
There’s another difference: One of Michele Bachmann’s things is to tell everyone else that they are doing it wrong, in Washington. She needs to be very clean to be able to tell everyone else to wipe their shoes so often.
Speaking as one of her constituents, I’m just as happy to have her missing votes. She does less damage that way. Now if she would just miss votes and stop speaking out loud…
Most jobs would require you to have a note from your doctor for missing a week, much less half your working time. Maybe its not too late to switch my masters from IT to politics, I can bullshit and rant with the best of them and I’m sure I could do well
If you believe that government is the problem, then I guess not showing up is part of the solution…
I think that may be one of Michele’s campaign slogans.