Allegedly fiscally conservative former congressman Rick Berg, a Fargo slumlord, was part of a relatively small group of legislators who gave bonuses to staff members of their record-low-job-approval congress.

A CNN analysis shows that as the federal government approached the fiscal cliff and sharp budget cuts last year, nearly 25 percent of House members gave their own staff members bonus checks (View the full expense reports). House members have complete and sole discretion over how their office budgets are spent and can choose to give their staffers bonuses.

CNN.com

In 2012, congressional job approval ratings approached the single digits and Berg's office's own approval couldn't have been doing all that well considering he lost an election in November of 2012.  Despite that, Berg gave tax-dollar-funded bonuses totalling $14,575.92 to staffers in his unpopular office.  Here's a breakdown of the bonuses Berg gave his staff, according to congressional records:  

I'd like to know when these bonuses were paid, too. Were they paid before Berg lost his bid for the U.S. Senate to Senator Heidi Heitkamp in November, or after?  My guess is that it was after. Did he hand them out as "Christmas bonuses"?  Or did he do it on his way out the door?  Or earlier?  I'd kinda like to know.

I'm also curious as to why the "part-time employee" got the same bonus as the "deputy state director." And why did the Chief of Staff get 9 times what just about everybody else got?  Is it because he did such a great job in helping Berg stay popular with his constituents in North Dakota?  Apparently not.

But the important thing here is that only 25% of the members of Congress handed out bonus checks in a year of budget cutting and deficits.  Were he a true fiscal conservative, dead-set on cutting the federal deficit, he wouldn't have needed to give all this free money to his staffers.  And, if any of his staffers were true fiscal conservatives, sincerely concerned about federal spending, they wouldn't have needed to accept the free money, either.

And by "free money" I mean "our tax dollars."

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