Stop Act: No response from Ohio Congressman's office

Multiple phone calls and one email to Ohio Republican Rep. Steve Stivers' office went unanswered last Thursday and Friday inquiring about the newly introduced Stop Act, which urges Congressmen to spend more time doing their jobs and less time calling for money.

The Stop Act bill that was proposed by Florida Republican Rep. David Jolly in January hopes to ban members of Congress from asking constituents for dollars, according Rep. Jolly's official website. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee outlined the number of hours per day each member of Congress should be calling people and asking for money. The numbers included four hours per day, which is 28 hours per week spent on calling people, and one to two hours per day visiting with citizens.

The email to Rep. Stivers' press aide was sent last Thursday and gave the aide until Monday by noon to answer questions regarding Rep. Stivers' views on the proposed bill. Today, there is still no response from the congressman's office.

The questions were straight forward:

Is Rep. Stivers in favor of or opposed to the Stop Act?

How many hours a day/week does Rep. Stivers spend calling for dollars?

Has Rep. Stivers publicly objected to the amount of time members are expected to spend fund raising?

Rep. Jolly has others who are in favor of stopping this current trend in Congress. 

A New York Times article written in January by former congressman and chairman of the DCCC, Steve Israel, talked about the problems with congressmen spending multiple hours doing things other than their jobs. Israel said that since 2000, "I've spent roughly 4,200 hours in call time, attended more than 1,600 fund-raisers just for my own campaign and raised nearly $20 million in increments of $1,000, $2,500 and $5,000 per election cycle."

The reform Israel and Rep. Jolly hope for seems like a lost cause, said Israel, who believes until the current "crowd in charge" gets replaced, changes will be nothing more than a dream.

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Ohio Republican Rep. Steve Stivers

In my opinion, stopping congressmen from spending the majority of their weeks calling constituents and asking for money is a must. American citizens expect these people who are in a position of power in our government to actually make changes, not just sit in a cubical calling people asking for money. This makes me wonder if other countries have members in their governments doing similar things, or if this is just an American thing.