{"id":221205,"date":"2010-01-23T18:29:41","date_gmt":"2010-01-23T23:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.courant.com,2010:\/capitol_watch\/\/9.70199"},"modified":"2010-01-23T18:56:10","modified_gmt":"2010-01-23T23:56:10","slug":"mark-greenberg-will-refuse-a-government-pension-if-elected-to-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/221205","title":{"rendered":"Mark Greenberg will refuse a government pension if elected to Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Litchfield businessman, a Republican&nbsp;is running for the 5th District, says he&#8217;ll forgo a government pension if elected &#8212; and he&#8217;s calling on his opponents to do the same.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am running for Congress because we need to bring basic business principles to a Washington establishment loaded with career politicians whose primary agenda is getting re-elected each election cycle,&#8221; Greenberg said via email. &#8220;Serving in Congress is not about landing a career position and a fat pension. It&#8217;s about being the voice of &#8216;We the people,&#8217; getting a job done on their behalf and then getting out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 30pt\"><span style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'\"><font color=\"#000000\">&nbsp;<o:p><\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Greenberg also says that, if elected, he won&#8217;t obtain his medical insurance through his employer, the federal government. Instead, he pledged to&nbsp;sign on to&nbsp;&#8220;the health care plan Congress eventually adopts for all Americans.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I believe it is an honor and a privilege to serve in Congress,&#8221; Greenberg said. &#8220;It should not be about monetary benefits and perks. What&#8217;s good for the average citizen should be good enough for its elected officials and I&#8217;m calling for all of the other candidates to do the same.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;The insurance&nbsp;that members of <span class=\"hilite\">Congress<\/span> have access isn&#8217;t a government-run plan. Like millions of other federal employees, from a local postal worker to a member of the president&#8217;s Cabinet, they are allowed to buy private insurance through the Federal Employee <span class=\"hilite\">Health<\/span> Benefits Program, which offers an array of options, including HMOs and fee-for-service plans. (Members of <span class=\"hilite\">Congress<\/span> get a few extra perks other federal workers don&#8217;t have, such as access to U.S. military hospitals.) <\/p>\n<p>At least four other Republicans are running for the 5th District seat: Justin Bernier, Sam Caligiuri, Dan Carter and Kie Westby. The winner of the GOP contest will face Democrat U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Litchfield businessman, a Republican&nbsp;is running for the 5th District, says he&#8217;ll forgo a government pension if elected &#8212; and he&#8217;s calling on his opponents to do the same. &#8220;I am running for Congress because we need to bring basic business principles to a Washington establishment loaded with career politicians whose primary agenda is getting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}