Senate Barber Shop Faces Budget Haircut

[Judi Lynn]

Source: ABC News

Senate Barber Shop Faces Budget Haircut
By Alisa Wiersema
Mar 29, 2013 1:01pm

In an attempt to curb wasteful government spending, Terrance Gainer, Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the Senate, is planning his own trims and cuts to the budget. Literally.

As sergeant at arms, Gainer is responsible not only for the maintenance of security protocol for the Senate, but also for arranging funerals, keeping custody of the Senate gavel, even maintaining senatorial hair coifs and cuts (sort of). And it’s the last where the trims come in.

In 2012, the Senate Hair Care Service received $300,000 in taxpayer bailout funds to keep it in business. This state of affairs sharply contrasts with Capitol Barber, the privatized House of Representatives’ barbershop, which does not rely on taxpayer assistance. Gainer is attempting to replicate the success of the Capitol Barber by privatizing Senate Hair Care Services.

“With the sequester, I’ve got a pretty big hole to fill,” he said in a New York Times interview published Wednesday.


Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/senate-barber-shop-faces-budget-haircut/

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Surely something can be done. Poor, poor Senators.

[adieu]

1. Hopefully,

those senators can get a better looking head of hair.

[goclark]

2. Are these cuts for them

being done on our dimes or their millions?

They already get their health insurance for life if I'm not
mistaken. Do their families and pets receive insurance as well


Shouldn't the Voters decide if they get a raise or not!!!!!

[marble falls]

3. I would be very glad to volunteer to cut these fellows' hair. Anybody seen my electric hedgeclipper?

[Thor_MN]

12. Hedgeclipper? You are much too kind. I volunteer to trim Turtle with my weed whacker.

[awoke_in_2003]

4. We pay for their haircuts, too?

Unreal.

[MichiganVote]

5. And a free health care clinic right on site for them. Common colds you know.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Yeah, those poor creatures. nt

[DearHeart]

7. Wondering if there is anything we don't pay for!!

People out here are going hungry, losing their homes, etc., and these bastards are milking the system for everything, including freakin haircuts!?! Why can't they take $10 bucks out of their own damn pockets, and go to Great Clips??? They're the damn "welfare queens"!!!

[awoke_in_2003]

8. No, probably not...

we probably pay for every meal they eat. The money that 99% of those fuckers on Capitol Hill receive from Wall Street is just a good bonus. The whole lot of them are prostitutes, good at making speeches, bad at representing the ones who elected them.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Even have the famous "Senate Bean Soup" made in their honor,

with recipes made available for every citizen who wants to make this sublime food of the gods at home!

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Might just explain all the excessive hot air around there.

[DearHeart]

11. "Might just explain all the excessive hot air around there." Perfect!!

[DearHeart]

10. You're right on the money with this response!!

[sofa king]

13. I'm pretty sure it was open to the public.

Back in the '90s one could roam the rabbit warren of Capitol Hill for miles without ever going above ground, and I have a vague recollection of visiting the barbershop with a buddy of mine who got his hair cut there so that his haircut matched the hair of the people he was lobbying (yes, lobbyists will try anything). I remember the barber offering to chop my long hair off for free, but that might have lost my "tail" of goons who protected me everywhere I went down there (okay, they were following me because I was the only guy who didn't have the Capitol Hill haircut, but I liked to pretend they were protecting me instead of being ready to gun me down at a moment's notice).

That whole place is weird. They had a couple of classic shoe-shine stands, Navy bean soup was on the menu at the cafeteria every day because somebody made it the law, the House-side "subway" was a rattling open-air cart from the 1920s more similar to a merry-go-round booth than a vehicle, and rumors abounded that Ted Kennedy had his own tunnel that went from the Senate to the Library of Congress to the basement of the Hawk and Dove, one of his favorite bars (a favorite of his son's as well). Even the upstairs offices, especially on the House side, are just as likely to look onto a shaded, prison-like atrium or a parking lot rather than one of DC's many sights. It's a very oppressive and uninteresting place in many ways.

Many politicians and political workers in DC live busy but very mundane lives, and some of the conveniences like the barber shop are obviously put in place to serve the pasty, vitamin-D deficient drones who do all of the actual work and rarely emerge from underground. They're not just inside the Beltway, they're inside the Beltway and underneath the chicken coop. So I don't begrudge them a few conveniences.

[awoke_in_2003]

14. Thanks for the perspective, sofa king. nt

[sofa king]

15. No problem!

I should add that this is neither the first nor the last time that the barber shop will be held hostage in budget negotiations. It's one of the few ways you can hit a Member of Congress where it hurts, by making them give up a convenience of their own.

Many Members of Congress have friendly personal relationships with those barbers, and as we all know, if a Republican does not experience someone else's suffering personally, they don't understand or care about it at all.

It is a comparatively minor affair, to be sure, but illuminating in that it reveals a lot about how the budget process actually works, down in the tunnels.

[tabasco]

16. We give these assholes free haircuts too???

Time to cut salaries and benefits in Congress!