I'm seeing all sorts of ways to refer to Members of Congress (meaning mostly Representatives, although Senators are also Members of Congress). Congressman and Congresswoman are not gender neutral and are disappearing from the language. Congressperson? Ugh. Liberal blogs will often use "Congresscritters" to register disdain, but I never liked it much. I just saw Congressfolk as an alternative. Pathetic. So here's another suggestion.
In the 1960s and 70s there was a particularly noxious Boston pol by the name of Louise Day Hicks. Hicks made her stand on opposing the desegregation of the Boston Public Schools and she openly appealed to the most backwards and often frankly racist segments of Boston's white community. A popular alternative weekly at the time was the Cambridge Phoenix, so popular in fact when its purchase was sought by a commercial rival, the writing staff revolted and formed a new paper, The Real Paper.
On the staff were NPR/PBS's Paul Solman and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. And Louse Day Hicks was not very popular with them. When she was elected to Congress, The Real Paper habitually referred to her as "Congressthing Hicks." So with a tip of the hat to The Real Paper (of blessed memory), I propose to adopt this terminology for Members of Congress.
Let's call them Congressthings.
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No.
'Representative' and 'Senator' are just fine. If you want to slam various representatives and Senators - and many of them deserve a through slamming - there are plenty of ways to do it without messing with their titles.
You answered this in your first sentence: Represenatives and Senators. Very easy.
Since they're the hired help, can't we just call them "hey, you"?
I can't really get excited about excising perfectly good words because they're not "gender neutral." Is that actually a goal? Not for me; I actually kind of like certain genders. Congressman is great, congresswoman somewhat more awkward, but whatever. Representative works too.
If "congress" is a verb that means to have sexual intercourse, then can there be a "congressor"?
...enhancing, yet again, the statutory meaning of 'commercial intercurse'...:-)
Congressthings is too kind. Reminds me of something harmless sitting on a shelf collecting dust. No, because they are bought and preprogrammed, like robots, I call them Congressbots.
can't resist... given the current US mind set"
congragressor
seems about right
These positions were created by the United States Constitution. That document uses the construction 'Senators and Representatives' when referring the set of all members of both houses.
I can see how 'Senators and Representatives' would be a bit cumbersome to have to write or say repeatedly. So I modestly propose that we use the abbreviation 'SARs'. Who could object to that?