In part I agree, but Congress was never intended to be a full-time legislative body. The congress person's job is to represent their people and if they are in far away Washington DC, they lose touch with their constiutency. In truth though, the reason that they were probably out of session more often than in session, is that elected officials are spending more time out trying to be re-elected than ever before and that is distracting our representatives and senators from their real jobs.