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Simple But Bold Reforms for Congress

Posted by Dave Smith on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 9:14:50 AM
According to the Constitution, Congress sets the salary for the President of the United States; however, Congress can't change the rate of pay for the President currently in office; any change in salary as mandated by Congress takes effect only after the next election.

For Congress, however, pay raises are as regular as Old Faithful. Regardless of "performance", or any other standard, Congress votes themselves pay raises on a regular basis. At times, they've even structured them such that they take place automatically, unless Congress specifically voted to the raises (and take a wild guess how often that happened).

In addition to a salary that puts them in the top 5% of all wage earners, Congressmen are paid a pension -- not a 401(k) type of plan, where the employer matches a certain portion of a person's own contributions, but basically after a member of Congress retires (voluntarily or not), we're still paying them. Until this month, even if a member of Congress was convicted of a felony crime, he still received his pension (yes, that means we're still paying Duke Cunningham his full pension).

Further, because there are no limits on the number of terms a representative or senator can serve, we literally have members of Congress who were serving and present in the chamber for State of the Union addresses by President Eisenhower! Along the way, people like West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd and Michigan Representative John Dingell have accumulated power, riches, influence, and have written laws under which they've never had to live, work, start a business, or serve.

How about a simple idea that might just kill two birds with one stone -- get future Congressional pay raises under control and remove at least a part of the incentive for a person to remain in Congress for many years: any pay raise passed by Congress does not credit toward any member serving in Congress at the time of its passage. In short, the salary earned by a Congressman or Senator at the time of his election would never change, no matter how long he served. No matter how much inflation, or taxes, or property went up, the salary would be set at its initial value.

Think Congressional salaries are too small? Fine, you can increase them, but only new members of Congress would reap the benefits. Want to make more money? Fine, you can join the private sector and start a business -- under the anti-business, stifling regulations and taxes you setup while you were in office. Then perhaps if you decide to return to "public service", you'll have a better perspective of exactly what type of laws are truly necessary.

Term limits have been roundly criticized by many who have stated that it limits their own choices, their own right to elect whomever they wish to their office. In this case, their choice would still be there, just with less incentive for a person to remain in Congress as a career and therefore likely fewer incumbents each election cycle. Fewer incumbents would mean more wide-open races, more choices, fewer entrenched power brokers using government money like candy to buy votes.

Another reform would be to abolish Congressional pensions altogether, in favor of a 401(k)-like program (I think the government version is called a 403(b) ). Instead of our tax money continuing to pay out a "defined benefit" to those who served in Congress, they would be allowed to contribute pre-tax dollars to a retirement savings account, subject to the exact same provisions as all other federal workers. I'd even be willing to extend the same "employer match" to them as is provided to federal workers. They would also be subject to Social Security, thus making the "retirement plan" dependent upon a combination of Social Security and whatever they choose to contribute to their own retirement account -- just like the rest of us.

I believe these simple reforms would do more to "drain the swamp" of Congress than any reform ever passed dealing with the Congressmen themselves. If you agree, write your Representative and Senators and advocate thusly.
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Dave's Weekly Riff

Posted by Dave Smith on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 9:13:34 AM
My random thoughts for the week...


By my calculations, it is 646 days until the 2008 presidential election. We already have something like 10 people who have declared their intentions to run, with several others on the fence. Of course, instead of real insight into the various candidates and their actual ideas and qualifications for office, approximately 99% of all news stories about the candidates and the election concern the "horse race" -- polling data, who will play well in what states, etc. Anyone wanting substantive analysis basically has to seek it out on his own and then sift through the hype and the agendas.

So we are faced with a glut of candidates and a lack of information. We are faced with a slate of, with little exception, unimpressive candidates, each believing that he (or she) is the only one truly qualified to lead this country. Unimpressive, uninspiring people with big egos. That's what our presidential elections have become...
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The weekend before the Super Bowl is one of the most boring sports weekends of the year.
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Movie recommendations: The Illusionist, Lucky # Slevin, andThe Proposition. All three movies are very well done, with excellent acting, directing, and cinematography. Each movie pulls you in and leaves you wanting more -- not in the sense that it is lacking, but rather wanting more of the movie, a sense of wishing there was another chapter to enjoy.
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One story that didn't need another chapter was that of Hannibal Lecter. Apparently, however, Thomas Harris decided he could use a couple million dollars more in his bank account, and wrote Hannibal Rising, which is basically a back story of Dr. Lecter, and one that is completely superfluous and far from compelling.

I thought the last book in what was the Lecter "trilogy", Hannibal, started strong but suffered from a completely ridiculous ending. This told me that Harris basically just ran out of gas. Unfortunately, this didn't stop him from trying to milk a few more miles out of the tank. Having received Hannibal Rising for Christmas, I read it anyway. I don't recommend it.
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Speaking of going on after having run out of rhetorical gas, this season of Donald Trump's The Apprentice is completely unwatchable. I've never been a big fan of so-called "reality" TV shows, but I have found myself watching Apprentice. You could see the show grinding down last season, and the Donald should have quit while he was ahead.
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Went to a new (well, at least new to me) club Saturday night called the ROC Bar. They played good old-fashioned hard rock music -- everything from Korn to Guns 'n' Roses to Metallica. It was a pretty cool change of pace.
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I haven't confirmed it, and there's plenty of time for it to fall through, but supposedly David Lee Roth will be re-joining Van Halen for a summer tour. If that's the case, that is one concert I will definitely be going to see. Those old VH albums with Roth on board were all rock & roll classics, especially the eponymous first album and Fair Warning, which was one of the most under-rated albums of all time by any group.
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I didn't watch the State of the Union speech the other night, but I did see the replay on HDNet Saturday. Yes, I obviously was a wee bit bored. I had read the text of the speech online already, but I was struck by how much Bush seemed to genuinely enjoy welcoming "Madame Speaker" Pelosi and talking about her father, a former Congressman himself. I thought it was a pretty classy gesture.

I was also struck by the Democratic response given by Senator James Webb of Virginia. While I think I disagreed with every single idea he espoused, the speech construction was excellent. The cadence, the use of allusion and rhetoric were as good as any political speech I've seen since Colin Powell's 1996 Republican National Convention address.
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Speaking of the State of the Union, once again we have a promise that the government is going to regulate us into independence from foreign oil. Let's see, since the federal government truly got involved in trying to manage our energy during the oil embargo of 1973, the percentage of oil we have to import has risen from approximately 30% of our total consumption to approximately 60%. How anyone can believe that the same government that can't deliver the mail is somehow going to deliver us from Middle Eastern oil is beyond me.
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