Faith in America’s governmental institutions is at an all-time low, and it’s little wonder, with so many unqualified and unhinged figures populating our current government.
Which brings me to Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Representative behind such wild assertions as 2024’s “Democrats control the weather” or 2021’s “Jewish space lasers cause wildfires.” There’s no take too unbalanced for Marge to take a swing at it, which lands her typical social media activity in distinctly deranged territory.
All of which makes it incredibly surprising when Greene tweets out something lucid, for once. Which is what she did in mid-February, when the 50-year-old shared a look at the House of Representatives’ calendar for 2025. A handy visual outlines which weeks the House will be in session, but even as Greene was urging “anyone planning trips to visit your Representative” to use it as a guide, most commenters were fixating on something entirely separate.
Most notably, they were stuck on how little work these people actually do. As Greene noted in a rushed reversal following pushback, there is plenty of work that’s unaccounted for by the simple calendar, but its still notable that many Representatives work less annually than even a part-time employee.
Some quick math from a commenter revealed that the House will require its Representatives to work only 136 days in 2025. While most of the rest of us are putting in five day workweeks, often delivering upwards of 40 hours of labor in a given week, our Representatives are enjoying three day weekends and consistently lengthy breaks.
People even called on Elon Musk and DOGE to take a look at government waste, noting that “if we want cut out waste why are these federal employees paid 6 figures a year with 17 weeks paid vacation?”
So you rake in $174K a year, get top-tier healthcare, and play the stock market with insider tips, all for working eight days a month? Not bad. Maybe if you lived on minimum wage for a year, you’d finally get why folks are drowning while you all cash in.
— Human
(@4HumanUnity) February 18, 2025
Do you get 17 weeks off?
— Michael Hunt (@StrandSam9) February 18, 2025
Even Greene’s fans — somehow, she has those — were skeptical of the calendar, with quite a few calling on the Representative to justify various breaks, including one that provides House members with the entire month of August off.
You shouldn’t have off the entire month of August. The advent of air conditioning changed the reasoning behind that prolonged break. Air travel reduced the traveling time to your home states. Justify this?
— schmoe joe (@SchmoeJ20036) February 18, 2025
I appreciate you putting out the calendar but you all need to be in session alot more. Congress knows what the american people want and to meet our expectations you need to be in washington getting the work done.
— lehren (@lehren69751989) February 17, 2025
Hope nothing important happens in August.
— Dev (@dwlub_devin) February 17, 2025
As a whole, this country is struggling right now. The vast majority of employees are underpaid, overworked, and unappreciated, and yet here comes MTG with a cockeyed grin, madness in her eyes, and a paycheck more than four times what I make in a year.
Not to mention that the House won’t even be in session during several pivotal moments, including the expiration of the current Continuing Resolution. That keeps the government funded, and it’ll be up on March 14, when the House will be on break.
In a response to pushback, Greene provided further details on the typical work schedule of a House member. And, while my distaste for Greene knows almost no bounds, she made several valid points. Like that Congresspeople often have to fly from their home districts to D.C. — yes, there are workarounds, but its none-the-less true — and that there’s plenty of work to be done in their actual districts during time in between sessions.
Based on your comments which I fully appreciate and don’t disagree with, I’ll share more information about serving in Congress.
For the yellow weeks, when we are in session, we have to fly into DC from our districts so that is a full travel day for many of us.
The last day of the…— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@RepMTG) February 17, 2025
There’s certainly more work on a competent House member’s to-do list than that simple calendar indicates, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating to see the divide between our government figures and the working class so clearly defined. These people don’t even work five days a week, and yet they make decisions about our lives? They pull in hundreds of thousands while we whittle away our lives working minimum wage jobs?
Its an unpleasant reality to face, and one that commenters aren’t taking laying down. Decades worth of anger is being unleashed below Greene’s post, but all its really exposing is how little our words — and our righteous anger — mean to the people on top.
