Wasteful spending: Congress pays clergy $66,000/hour to pray
Last edited Fri Nov 4, 2016, 01:54 AM - Edit history (2)
The Senate Chaplains Office has a budget of $436,886 this year. The House Chaplains budget is similar, but it was not a line itemit was lumped in with $24,980,898 for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Clerk, including the positions of the Chaplain and the Historian. However, the Senate chaplain has three staffersa director of communications, a chief of staff, and an assistantwhile the House Chaplain only has two staffersan assistant and a liaison. The salaries alone for the three in the House chaplains office top $345,000 according to InsideGov. Add expenses and Congress is spending $800,000 every year on its opening prayers.
If you do that math for 2011 (the chaplain gave 104 prayers that year), the House chaplains salary works out to $1,659 per prayer or, if the prayers average about 90 seconds, a salary of $66,346 an hour. (The House chaplain gave 104 prayers that year: 156 minutes or 2.6 hours.)
Thats more than 9,000 times greater than the federal minimum wage and more than the combined hourly wage for the CEOs of Starbucks, Macys and Wal-mart. In fact, its more than triple those CEOs combined hourl
I don't blame these jokers for smiling.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/freethoughtnow/wasteful-spending-congress-pays-clergy-66000hour-to-pray/