The echo of the opening gavel has yet to die away, and the Legislature has already started with the useless resolution crap again. How many thousands more will follow? Will the Legislature be tied up with them until June, blocking any meaningful work??
As not only a working member of society, but also a TN Gen Assembly employee I am VERY offended that he thinks $161/day just isn't enough. I work 40 hours a week and make ~$350. Multiply that times 4 and you get ~$1400 a month. The rent on my apartment is $660, my cell phone bill is ~$55, water is ~$40, electric is ~$50, I spend around $60 each month on gas for my car. After all that I have about $535 per month to live on, and I haven't even bought groceries yet. For those keeping up with the math, that's about $17.80 per day. I want to see Sen. Tate live on that.
The sad part is the per diem does not even include the pay or other perks. When session isn't in a "Full day of work" could be as little as a few minutes in the office.
I am offended that state legislators who live in Nashville get to take home an extra income from their per diem that they do not use for hotel and gas. I'd be happy to divvy up their per diem and distribute it among the other reps who do have to rent hotels or apartments because they can't drive home while in session. Someone brought this up in Sherry Jones race (I think she was one of the biggest beneficiaries of per diem and expenses in general) and I was surprised no one seemed to care. To me, if you have they "I'm going to take what's mine because I can" attitude with the per diem, it doesn't build confidence with how they will handle the rest of our tax dollars.
The very fact that numerous legislators come in to their office on days the legislature is not in session indicates that the per diem is quite an attractive number.
Put another way,
The $161 per diem per day is equivalent to an annual salary (after taxes) of $41,860.
Tate only wants to make it a $52,000 salary (after taxes).
This, in a state where the median income is around $35,000 and our legislators have unconstitutionally busted the budget (again) and are telling us they will take even more of our money.
With the proliferation of bad grammar and spelling throughout the Internet, I think that the "lowering of standards" is inappropriate at this time. Where will children learn to spell?
Commenting by HaloScan
