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I'd say these members of Congress ought to be ashamed of their behavior and taking care of themselves first when it comes to fixing any of this budget sequester debacle that's causing real pain and economic harm to many of the most vulnerable among us, but as Jon Stewart noted in his opening segment this Monday, they really do have no shame.

Jon Stewart: Congress doesn’t care about meals-on-wheels unless it is rolling down an aisle:

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart took Congress to task on Monday night for funding air traffic controllers because they were personally affected by flight delays.

“We all know that if you look up Congress in the dictionary it says, ‘Do-nothing fucktards who couldn’t solve a problem if it was eating them alive anus first,’ he said. ”

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President George W. Bush’s former chief strategist Matthew Dowd on Sunday lashed out at Congress for moving so quickly to fund air traffic controllers because lawmakers were personally "about to get delayed at the airports," while they couldn't pass background checks to protect children from mass shootings.

During a panel discussion on ABC's This Week, Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile noted that Congress had rushed through a bill to avert air traffic controller furloughs caused by automatic budget cuts in the so-called sequester, but ignored the pain the cuts were causing less-wealthy Americans.

"This sequester will have real impact on real people in real time, not just members of Congress, but people that work for the park service, medical research as the NIH begin to make those cuts, it's impacting Meals on Wheels, kids who are in kindergarten," Brazile explained. "So I really do think that Congress needs to take a second look at this."

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, however, called the air traffic controller bill "a real victory for fiscal conservatism" because Congress moved funds around, instead of undoing any budget cuts.

"Doesn't that mean the politically weakest are going to bear the biggest burden?" ABC host George Stephanopolous wondered.

"Not necessarily," Gingrich insisted. "It may mean the most corrupt are going to bear the biggest burden. It may mean the dumbest are going to bear the biggest burden. When you look at a $4 trillion government, you can find lots of really stupid things to quit paying for."

But Dowd found it "amazing" that the bitterly partisan Congress could only find a way to work together when they personally faced the possibility of spending some additional time on the tarmac.

"The only way they're bipartisan is to do something for themselves," he quipped. "It's amazing the speed at which they did that. We have this horrible shooting where all these children die in Connecticut, we can't pass gun control legislation. But oh by the way, you're about to get delayed at the airport through some small budget cuts -- which I still don't understand why we make policy the way we make policy. Everybody knows there's a fiscal crisis in this country, everybody knows we don't have the revenue to meet the expenses in this country, somebody has to bear pain, but we act in Washington like nobody has to bear any pain. So as soon as anybody bears any pain, we're going to take it back from them."

"I think many members of Congress have bought into a myth that doesn't exist anymore," he added. "I think most of what's gong on in gun control is there's not this huge vehement group of people saying I'm going to defeat you if you vote for background checks, I'm going to defeat you if you vote for high-capacity magazines... What there is, though, is a group of folks in Washington that are scared of their shadow on this issue, both some Democrats and a lot of Republicans."

"The myth doesn't exist anymore, but they're afraid to go launch themselves through it and do something about it."

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On this Sunday's Meet the Press, Sen. John McCain continued to prove the point Chris Hayes made on his show this Friday about just who Congress is responsive to, and it's not your average citizen out there. McCain thinks we have "our priorities a little bit skewed" on these sequestration cuts, but of course there's only one area he's concerned about, and that's defense spending.

MCCAIN: Well I say with all due respect to my friends, it's a little bit hypocritical, the same day when all the focus was on the delays that we have in getting through airports, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army was saying that we're... if we don't reverse this, we're going to have a hollow army. We'll be unable to defend the nation and it would take us ten or fifteen years to recover.

I think we have our priorities a little bit skewed here. Look, I'm for giving the FAA flexibility, but I also want to give the military flexibility and I don't want these sequestration cuts to be as deep as they are on the issue of defense. We've got a lot of savings we can make in national security, but right now we are, in the words of the Secretary of Defense and our uniformed service chiefs, we're putting the security of this nation at risk.

McCain was basically repeating what he said in a press release from this Friday.

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After only four members of Congress even bothered to show up for a hearing this week on what should be the most important issue of our time -- getting Americans back to work -- MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry let them know what she thought about it on this Saturday's show.

If only Congress considered unemployment as urgent as flight delays:

Dear Members of the Joint Economic Committee:

It’s me, Melissa. Mind if I call ya J.E.C.?

I get it. A legislator’s work is never done. Days filled with dozens of hearings, back and forth to the Capitol for debates and votes, the obligatory press conferences. You can’t be everywhere at once. Inevitably some balls are going to get dropped. You’ve gotta prioritize, right?

After all, immigration reform is imminent, there’s a terrorist attack to be responded to–and can’t forget those flight delays!

Yes, you are there when it matters. Which can only leave me with one conclusion when I look at this photo, and see testimony about how to get the long term unemployed back to work, given before a room of empty chairs.

To you, this crisis confronting our country simply doesn’t matter. And make no mistake this is a crisis–not just for those who’ve fallen into chronic joblessness, but also for the U.S. economy. It’s what the National Employment Law Project has called “the real cliff that threatens our economy.”

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While thousands of low-income Americans are suffering under sequestration, our Congress somehow managed to rush through a fix for the FAA cuts that were delaying their their flights. Imagine that! As Chris Hayes discussed in the opening of his show this Friday, it's so nice to see that those members of Congress have got their priorities in order.

HAYES: But we begin tonight with the big flashing headline breaking news of the day, from the least popular branch of government, the branch of government widely seen as the most dysfunctional branch of government, the one that contains the right-wing Republican House caucus committed to obstruction above all else. In that branch of government today, today we saw a remarkable display of urgency and pragmatic bipartisan problem solving come together in a matter of hours to fix the most pressing trouble facing America today.

And that very pressing problem is extended travel delays for frequent flyers and members of Congress. Yes, it was a long and tortured path to triumph on this issue. but today in a 361 to 41 vote, a resounding margin, House of Representatives overwhelmingly agreed to tackle the scourge of flight delays being caused by the furlough of federal aviation workers.

Sadly the first piece of legislation that members of Congress saw fit to pass will make those lines at the airports shorter, and as Hayes reminded his audience, here's who will not be getting relief from the bill passed this Friday.

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After first attacking former Rep. Barney Frank and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer's remarks about the Boston Marathon bombings as being "irresponsible" -- because lord knows no one on Fox would ever try to make a political issue out of a tragedy -- and they really hate it if someone makes a valid point about the need for civil servants like policemen and firefighters and the taxes required to pay their salaries -- Sean Hannity asked his guest, Rudy Giuliani about who he thought was responsible for the attack.

I'm sure Mr-a-Noun-a-Verb-and-Nine-Eleven made him very sad with this response.

GIULIANI: My hunch, is that it's homegrown...

HANNITY: Explain what that means, when you say homegrown...

GIULIANI: I don’t think this is orchestrated by al Qaeda or any of their offshoots in Africa or other places from there. I think frankly if it was, we would’ve picked it up because it would’ve had to been communicated internationally.

Waiting for the attacks on Giuliani from the right to start in 10... 9...

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I have no idea whether the death threats against our first black president have been bad enough that the Secret Service actually has decided to employ a food taster to make sure that he isn't poisoned, but as Tommy Christopher pointed out, if it is true, he wouldn't be the first. That didn't stop the likes of Swanson heir Tucker Carlson and his rag, The Daily Caller, along with every other right-winger on the Internet from going crazy and using it as an excuse to attack President Obama for acting like "royalty."

Here's more from Wonkette: Sequester Eliminates Position Of White House Taster, President To Starve:

Bammerz is still holding his lame ass meetings with Congressional Republicans in his latest flailing attempt to show them that he too wants to inflict as much needless pain on the vulnerable with stupid spending cuts. Apparently it was Susan Collins’ turn to have her special day with the President and as such she brought a Maine-themed feast full of shellfish and blueberry pie. However the President didn’t touch this succulent lunch, and not because he felt uncomfortable with Senator Collins bringing him a big plate of aphrodisiacs:

“Unfortunately, you know, the president can’t….He looked longingly at it..He honestly did look longingly at it, but apparently he has to have essentially a taster, and I pointed out to him that we were all tasters for him, that if the food had been poisoned all of us would have keeled over so, but he did look longingly at it and he remarked that we have far better food than the Democrats do, and I said that was because I was hosting.”

Okay it seems that we’ve learned a few things from this. First of all thanks to the President we now know that Senator Klobuchar’s “Taconite Tater Tot Hot Dish” is as gross as it sounds. Secondly: Obama has a food taster? Oh sweet Indonesian Curried Dog Stew we are never going to hear the end of this.

Sadly, despite the fact that story first came from the incredibly accurate source known as the Daily Caller and has since hit the right wing echo chamber thanks to AIM Investigative Reporter of the year Jim Hoft, it seems that the President is protected by a food taster. Why the nation’s first black president would feel compelled to employ someone meant to protect his food in this wonderful era of complete racial transcendence and political civility is beyond our comprehension, but it does automatically mean that Obama is an evil aristocratic dictator whose tyranny is only matched by his disdain for the common people. Read on...

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From this Thursday's opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference 2013, Texas Gov. Goodhair apparently decided that the "stupid party" could use a little more help with that Hispanic outreach program of theirs: Rick Perry: Immigrant Release Is A ‘Federally Sponsored Jailbreak’:

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside of Washington on Thursday, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry decried immigration authorities for releasing several hundred detainees in response to sequester cuts.

President Obama's handling of the sequster "would be laughable if he hadn't taken it one step too far, dangerously releasing criminals onto our streets to make a political point," he said. "When you have a federally sponsored jailbreak, --and dont get confused that's exactly what this is, a federally sponsored jailbreak -- you cross the line from politics as spin to polics as craven form of cynicism where everything goes."

White House officials say the decision was made by ICE independently. Many detainees are not held on criminal grounds and Immigration officials say they only released low risk individuals, not anyone who was required to be held for serious charges.

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"Let these families take their White House tour next week and I'll cover the added expenses," he explained. "Word is it will cost around $74,000. If I can get the White House doors open, I'll pick up the tab... You know this is an offer you can't refuse. Give me a call."

"I think we just realized that The Five isn't your primary source of income," co-host Greg Gutfeld quipped.

Later in the hour, Fox News host Sean Hannity joined in Bolling's offer, tweeting, "[G]reat idea! Count me in, I will pay for a week also!"

But in all the fuss over whether or not lawmakers can give out White House tours as gifts, MSNBC host Martin Bashir pointed out that everyone was missing a very serious point that "it’s the public who are being injured by the sequester."

For the money that Bolling and Hannity have agreed to spend so that lawmakers can give constituents access to a short walk through the White House, the Fox News hosts could also provide one year of nutritional and preschool programs to 15 of the 75 children that could be cut from the Head Start program because of sequestration.

Or according to the Nation, they could fund over 90,000 meals to hungry families through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps program, which is also expected to face cuts.

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For the second night in a row, old Bill-O couldn't manage to keep his temper in check with a Fox Democrat who dared counter his lies on whether President Obama put forth any specific proposals to reduce the deficit. This time it was Kirsten Powers' turn in the box, who actually bothered to bring material printed straight from the White House's web site to read to O'Reilly, but as she told him during the segment, he just responded by moving the goal posts on what would satisfy him.

Bill O’Reilly to Kirsten Powers: ‘You Can’t Give Me One Specific on Obama’s Proposed Spending Cuts’:

The Daily Beast columnist said it’s “completely untrue” that Obama hasn’t proposed any cuts, citing Medicare as an example. In the president’s fiscal year 2013 budget, Powers said there’s $400 billion in cuts to federal health care spending.

O’Reilly began grilling Powers on how those health care cuts will manifest themselves and asked her to name one specific drug company the administration wants to negotiate prices with.

“Hold on,” Powers interjected. “This is what you do, you change the discussion. […] I’m giving you specifics. What you said last night was the president did not propose anything. The president proposed this to the Republicans.”

After charging that the other is in fact “100 percent wrong,” O’Reilly reasoned, “We’ll let the folks decide.”

Laughing, Powers retorted, “You are wrong about this and now you’re playing a game […] because we can’t name a drug company, I mean come on.”

“Listen Powers, you say you’re going to negotiate with drug companies to bring down spending on drugs and you don’t have one company mentioned,” O’Reilly argued. “[…] This is where you and I will never agree.”

“Because I use facts?” chastised Powers.

h/t Media Matters