Politicians are out of touch with people

Our senators and representatives have great jobs, fantastic health care benefits and a wonderful pension plan who think they know and understand what the plain folks are going through. I hear their speeches and am struck by just how out of touch they really are.

I don't think they have any idea what it's like to live the life of a person who has been unemployed. One reason may be that 44 percent of the members of Congress are millionaires.

It's time politicians experience just a tiny piece of the lives of their constituents.

I propose that every member of congress spends a few full days and nights with a family whose breadwinner is unemployed and looking for a job. Learning first hand, what it's like to know you will never be called back to work because your job no longer exists.

Then spend a few days with a person who is severely underemployed. Working in a job that doesn't utilize their education, talents, experiences or abilities; and then spend time with a recent college grad who has tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to deal with, but is unable to find a job in his/her field with few or no prospects in the foreseeable future.

Once they experience what real people are going through, they can do something constructive for a change. Until then, all I get from 535 politicians in Washington D.C. is a bunch of meaningless sound bites strung together in the hope their constituents believe they actually feel their pain and want to do something more noble than getting re-elected.

By the way, if the bigwigs at American corporations did the same thing, maybe they wouldn't be so quick to export our jobs overseas so they can produce inferior products at lower wages.

Len Brauer

Palatine