Dear Congress,

The people (your bosses) are tired of you. We are tired of the bickering, the pettiness, the posturing and the strong-arming.

We want to see you working, not stroking your egos or those of your major donors.

There are significant groups of people in this country who are in desperate need of help, and your response has been to let them flounder. These people may not be your constituents, but one day your own people very well could be in a similar predicament.

No region of this country is safe from disaster of any kind. The longer you hold Sandy recovery funds at bay, the more you risk disgusting the majority of voters.

This bill is not about you or your party. It's about people who are homeless as a result of a natural disaster — and many others who are struggling to keep their homes and their boats as a result of playing by the rules the federal government established for their fishery and getting bupkis in return for more than two decades.

And what has delayed action done? So far, it has not served to reduce the Senate-proposed bill, as the House Republicans initially intended. House leaders were pushing to cut fishing disaster relief funding (for Alaska king salmon and New England groundfish) from the Senate-proposed $60 billion bill. They countered with a $24 billion bill.The Senate eventually approved a $60.4 billion bill last Friday. The House approved $9.7 billion in emergency funds to the federal coastal flood insurance program and is expected to get around to voting on the rest of the bill next week.

Lest we forget, this storm hit the East Coast at the end of OCTOBER last year. The best-case scenario at this point is that it will have taken the House nearly three months to get around to releasing aid funds. That is unacceptable.

And ultimately, House Speaker Jim Boehner (R-Ohio) is conceding to the Senate's proposal. Or is perhaps seeing the light that sometimes pork is not pork, it's just the business of running the country. Most of the funding in the relief bill is earmarked for storm recovery and disaster prevention in other regions of the country. It's not hard to come to the conclusion that it was put there to secure Republican votes in the Senate.

So what was the point of delaying?

All I can see is that the modern model of national politics is a mangled, limping mess that insists it's fine, when it really needs to be put out of its misery. Once upon a time, members of Congress collaborated with a mutual understanding and respect that despite disagreements on the details, negotiations have to come to the middle, because that's where the majority of Americans are.

Can someone get that message to Congress? Maybe we should suggest sector management for the House of Representatives. We'll call it Vote Shares. There will be fewer of them, but they'll get paid more and be easier for us to control. What a deal!