Excellent piece, well-worth reading. Shows what we are up against. Alvin
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By Ken Silverstein

Try to list the stakes at play in the congressional elections this fall, and one might settle on health care, taxes, immigration, Iraq. Seldom considered, though, is an issue of more direct importance to the members of Congress themselves: Which party will get to live more lushly in the nation’s capital, where those who control the levers of legislation also command the most and best perks? Washington by and large is a restrained, workaday sort of town, its residents not known for high living; but a significant exception can always be found among the denizens of Capitol Hill, and especially among the legislators who command a majority there. For this convivial crew and its hangers-on, the most pressing matter to be decided on Election Day is, as ever, whether they can hold on to that majority and all its accompanying boons.

The most lavish benefit of winning a congressional campaign is, ironically enough, the right to keep on campaigning—and therefore to keep raising and spending donor money.

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