Just a days ago, U.S Rep. Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, introduced legislation that would prevent members of Congress and the President of the U.S. from receiving pay in the event of the federal government shutting down.

This possible shutdown of the government is due to the federal budget not being approved.

Currently, Congress and the President are paid through mandatory spending required by law and are therefore unaffected if other government offices are shuttered and federal employees face a furlough because of this dilemma.

While this is a significant issue for those involved in the government, Moran seems to be among those taking this seriously.

“If we’re going to throw federal employees, including our staffs, out on the street, we should be right there with them,” Moran wrote in a press release on Feb. 18 published on his website.

According to an article in the Huffington Post, an online news website, 237 of the 435 members of Congress are millionaires.

Why should government employees have to suffer this budget cut when a single member of Congress makes an estimated $154,000 a year in addition to their private wealth.

For many government employees, this is their only source of income, on which they rely heavily.

Let’s say for a moment each member of Congress gave up his or her salary of $154,000 for one year.

That would generate approximately $67 million that could either be used for funding for government employees or even be applied to the federal deficit.

These are the people running our country, yet approval ratings of the job they do have been low for consecutive years.

This being the case, why do we choose to keep re-electing many of the same members?

If Americans do not even approve of the job their Congress is doing, how can they respect them as people and the decisions they make?

Personally, when Congress starts making decisions that will positively affect our nation, I will start taking them seriously.