A little bit of Math

Federal Representatives and Senators receive roughly $168,000 a year, the two party leaders in each chamber receive roughly 186,600 a year, and the Speaker receives 215,700 a year.

There are 100 Senators
There are 435 Representatives
There are two party leaders per each chamber, who are also senators and representatives.
The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is also a representative.

With this in mind there are 98 Senators at roughly base pay
And there are 432 representatives at roughly base pay

98 x 168,000 = 16,464,000
432 x 168,000 = 72,576,000
4 x 186,600 = 746,400
1 x 215,700 = 215,700
= 90,002,100

In summary, we pay the Legislative branch alone to stand around for 40+ minutes doing this: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-hr58/show

During an economic crisis, the most important thing is to commend a football team for winning.

Thank you congress, I'm glad that you choose to waste my tax dollars voting and discussing useless bills over and over again instead of actually attempting to "change" things. Please continue to be useless and take much more of my money with new taxes that you seem to make all the room for to line your pockets. I'm glad I can trust you all to be so fiscally responsible

LibertyCatalyst

Afterthought: Don't you think we pay them a bit too much to sit around and do stuff like this? There are 535 congressmen total. How many do you think actually contribute something to the matter, instead of just voting with their party?