80 Percent of Congress Has No Experience in Business or Economics

No wonder this country is broke.

The recent financial misbehavior of a few U.S. Congressmembers prompted our very own Keli Goff to ask "Can Your Member of Congress Balance a Checkbook?"

Well, the Employment Policies Institute must have heard her because they just released a report essentially saying, "Hell no, they can't."

Their findings say that less than 10% of Congress have any experience in business or economics. Only 8.9% of them even majored in business or economics when in college, while only 13.7% of them even bothered taking classes business or accounting. Most of them (55.5%) spent their college days studying government and law while 11.5% majored in science and technology fields. Guess this means that our country's budget is being handled by a bunch of bureaucrats and wanna-be Mr. Wizards.

"This research suggests that our elected Representatives may want to dust off their Econ 101 textbook (if they have one) before trying to tackle weighty questions about the impact of taxes, spending, and debt on our economy and the labor market," EPI's release said.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or math whiz for that matter, to see that the people running this country have a lot to learn when it comes to financial responsibility. The last five months have shown the U.S. is dead broke and  pretty much living check-to-check. Republicans have a reputation for pushing for tax cuts for the rich and corporate sector, claiming that it can open up more money for them to hire people -- this despite the Republican Corporate Chairman Henry Bloch said that logic was "baloney." Meanwhile, Democrats are in favor of taxing companies, especially ones that outsource jobs to foreign countries, or at least ending tax subsidies to super-wealthy oil companies. But with the unemployment rate still being high, seems like no one is getting the job done.

EPI says that college degrees in business or finance don't guarantee that lawmakers could do a better job, but that a formal education in these subject  "would certainly help them to evaluate these things better."