A question that's been bugging me

[blues90]

When these senators are out there campaigning and not in the senate to vote do they pass one their paychecks , after all they are out there for their own personal business , no one forced them to toss their hats in the ring now did they .

Also what motivated Obama to toss his hat in , I knew nothing much about before he decided to run .

I not here to bash Dems but these are questions I ask myself .

[Recursion]

1. Many rules of the Senate date back to stagecoach days

It's not expected, consequently, that a Senator spend all (or even most) of the session actually there.

[Breeze54]

2. McCain: Most absentee '08 Senator - He's missed 18 straight votes & 60 over all!

McCain: Most absentee '08 Senator

By Paul Kane | April 26, 2007

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2007/04/mccain_most_absentee_08_senato.html

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), missing another major vote on the Iraq war today in favor of presidential campaigning, has pulled far ahead of his 2008 rivals in at least one category: absenteeism.

McCain, who missed today's vote while campaigning in South Carolina as part of another re-launch of his White House bid, has gone two straight weeks without casting a single vote on the chamber floor. He's missed 18 straight votes.

Over the last month, the Senate has held 33 votes. McCain, the onetime frontrunner for the Republican nomination, has been on hand for just seven of those votes.

snip-->

Besides Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) - who's missed the entire year as he recovers from a brain hemorrhage - McCain has now missed more votes, 60, than every other senator, making it to less than 60 percent of roll-call votes.

The next three most absentee senators are also 2008 candidates, Joseph Biden (D-Del.), Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). But they've only missed 41, 37 and 26 votes, respectively. And two top-tier presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), have been present so often on the chamber floor you wouldn't even know they're running for the White House.

Obama has missed seven votes, Clinton three.

more....

Of course that was in April, so the missed votes may be even higher now!

[VP505]

3. Come on, this is

the Senate were talking about here, not some bunch of peons, they don't have a rule that says they actually have to work for their money.