I haven’t lived in Congresswoman Nita Lowey’s New York district since June of 2005. That’s the month I moved to Maine. Her office knows that I moved, as evidenced by the correct address — in Maine — on the form letters I receive from Lowey Headquarters every so often. Evidently, Ms. Lowey, a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, likes to keep me informed of her accomplishments. In her latest missive, she writes,
Dear Friend: I wanted to update you on my efforts to rein in federal spending and the national debt.
Reining in spending is an admirable goal. So I suppose it would be churlish of me to wonder why someone so hellbent on curbing government waste keeps writing to people who are not her constituents, while billing taxpayers for the cost of “preparing, publishing, and mailing” those “Aren’t I awesome” letters.
A lot of people make this naive mistake at first so you can be excused this time. You see this member of congress has to spend this money or next year her budget will shrink because she did not sufficiently squander last year’s budget. Without a fat promotional budget, she will not be able to send propaganda next year, none of us want that do we? The patriotic thing to do would be to send a change of address to the Congress person’s office with an off shore address, that way she could squander hundreds of dollars sending the exact same letter to your address in South Africa. (which she no doubt would do if she chased you to another congressional district, what is a few countries when your talking about budgets?)
Thank you for highlighting fundamental problems with government, keep up the good work.