As Grover Norquist pointed out yesterday, Americans now work 197 days out of the year just to pay for the cost of government - which is a depressing enough thought all by itself. But then you read stuff like this, and the blood start to boil:

Ten lawmakers went on a weeklong, taxpayer-paid trip from May 23 to 30 for meetings of the Transatlantic Legislators' Dialogue in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with subsequent stops - and la dolce vita - in Venice and Naples. The dialogue unites lawmakers with peers from the European Parliament. Seven in the U.S. delegation had a spouse along, says Lynne Weil, spokeswoman for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The group was rounded out by six aides and the House chaplain, according to reports on official foreign travel, which do not list accompanying spouses. The reported costs were $53,992, a figure that understates the bottom line since most lawmakers flew on military planes and the Pentagon refuses to release details such as the aircraft, manifest, and estimated cost.

Fifty four grand is peanuts in the grand scheme of things, I know. But it's the principle. Why do Shelley Berkeley, Phil Gingrey and Sheila Jackson-Lee need to be improving their dialogue with their "peers" in Europe? What they should be doing is improving their dialogue with their constituents back home. Remember those people? You should, because they also go by another name: your bosses.