Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) this week introduced the "Taking Responsibility for Congressional Pay Act," which would cut senators' and representatives' salaries by 5 percent starting Jan. 1, 2011. The measure would enact the first pay cut for Congress since 1933

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/03/should-congress-take-a-pa_n_483870.html

3/5/2010 3:03:00 PM

*puts devils advocate hat firmly in place*

Because we want to attract even less talent to government, and increase the percentage of elected officials who are independently wealthy... yeah that will show congress what the average American is going through financially right now.

[Edited on March 5, 2010 at 3:23 PM. Reason : .]

3/5/2010 3:16:53 PM

Quote :

"$174,000"

* 0.95 = $165,300

Ouch.

(Still though, this is a move in the right direction.)

3/5/2010 3:22:44 PM

Of all the wasteful spending in government this is probably the least important.

3/5/2010 3:24:06 PM

How much time will consideration and implementation of this bill cost in terms of the amount of administration and hours worked involved to make it happen?

3/5/2010 3:25:38 PM

Least important, but most obvious.

3/5/2010 3:26:09 PM

I have not put much thought into it, but it seems to me that we would be a better country is our Senators had day jobs outside of Congress just like Texas state senators do.

3/5/2010 3:26:44 PM

*hat still in place*

Legislators in the General Assembly in NC make what, 20 to 22 k a year, with their jobs requirements being more and more full time and then some. Giving those who control the laws little money, and a lot of work is a good way to ensure temptation and corruption.

And law is a complex and very important thing, do we really want to lose institutional memory by making it a job people can't afford to keep long, and attract people to it who couldn't fill in the blank ________'s Rules of Order.

If you reduce pay your likely to get more retired CEO's than you are average working men and women into office, which completely defeats the point of reducing salaries.

3/5/2010 3:39:47 PM

Seems kinda petty. Now a 5% pay cut for all federal employees, and a pay freeze from that point for the next year or so in light of the current fiscal problems, might actually make some small impact.

3/5/2010 3:49:16 PM

Quote :

"Of all the wasteful spending in government this is probably the least important."

3/5/2010 3:51:56 PM

I don't think people are considering the big picture here. Ignoring inflation and additional districts, adjusting for interest alone, this easily tops a billion dollars saved over the next 40 years.

3/5/2010 4:02:12 PM

Oh, a billion dollars over the next 40 years?

3/5/2010 5:03:39 PM

this is a stupid bill. and your thread title is a little presumptuous

3/5/2010 6:39:17 PM

Quote :

"Giving those who control the laws little money, and a lot of work is a good way to ensure temptation and corruption. "

To be fair, paying them a lot hasn't exactly done much to curb temptation and corruption.

3/5/2010 6:41:31 PM

they're not paid a lot for the responsibility they have.

3/5/2010 6:55:20 PM

Rich people have money. Waaaah.

3/5/2010 7:23:47 PM

Next lets work on term limits. Being a Senator or Congressman is not, nor should not, be a career, it should be a term of service.

3/5/2010 7:36:58 PM

term limits have their own problems.

3/5/2010 7:40:52 PM

Quote :

"they're not paid a lot for the responsibility they have."

What responsibility? They don't read any of the laws they pass. They don't write any of the laws they pass. They're never held accountable or responsible for the damage their laws (which they do not read or write) cause.

3/6/2010 1:05:22 PM

Quote :

"term limits have their own problems."

I'm not so sure. I imagine legislators become better at politicking, not legislating, as time progresses. The people who actually write the laws are career civil servants.

3/6/2010 1:15:32 PM

At the same time I imagine you do, if even just by contact, actually get a bit better at legislating after doing it for a while.

3/6/2010 1:55:07 PM

but depending on how long the term limits are, you would likely have shitty leadership (and likely leadership that is just a puppet for some lobbyist/other unelected person).

3/6/2010 2:44:18 PM

Quote :

"I have not put much thought into it, but it seems to me that we would be a better country is our Senators had day jobs outside of Congress just like Texas state senators do."

why?
I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but just wondering what makes that an obvious statement to you

3/6/2010 3:44:02 PM

but really. i think a much more robust publicly-funded campaign option would improve things. make it so that young legislators aren't spending 60% of their time trying to raise money for their next election. sure, they should have some number of signatures from their potential constituents to qualify. but i think that if the public funding was adequate / combined with guaranteed ad time and/or debates on TV, it would get our public servants to spend their time keeping up on policy/legislation. i was reading about a young house rep who said that since he became a congressman, he knows the least about policy than he has in years just because so much time is tied up in fundraising now.

[Edited on March 6, 2010 at 6:00 PM. Reason : .]

3/6/2010 5:59:47 PM

^^ maybe because they'd have to actually know something about how the real world works?

3/6/2010 10:13:33 PM

i think upfitting the AMT is something we all can agree on. its hurting middle class families as is right now.

3/6/2010 10:20:46 PM

how about we just GET RID of the AMT and have a more sensible tax code that doesn't ass-rape the middle-class

3/6/2010 10:23:39 PM

^^^ oh, right, because most of our representatives were born into the job and have never had another job in their lives except US Senator or Congressman

3/6/2010 10:52:25 PM

Ted Kennedy.
Charlie Rangel.
Jesse Helms.
Nancy Pelosi.
Harry Reid.
Howard Coble.

do I need to continue? There's a reason there is such a term as "career politician." The one-and-done folks don't affect things as much as those who hang around for 50 years.

3/6/2010 11:14:18 PM

Quote :

"Because we want to attract even less talent to government,"

Is that possible?

Taking your thinking further...How about paying them all a million dollars a year, that way they'll all be above the possibility of corruption. Maybe $2 million..just to play it safe.

3/7/2010 12:46:54 AM

Quote :

"How about paying them all a million dollars a year, that way they'll all be above the possibility of corruption."

*taking off the devils advocate hat*

I have no serious objections to this bill, it is too minuscule a pay reduction to put the US Senators in an easier position to corrupt.

But the corrupt comment that you pulled out was specifically from a 2 sentence paragraph about state legislators (a point someone else brought up first) not US legislators, and I mentioned that significant reductions to someones salary who is making about 20k a year, and charged with a lot of power and responsibility is an area where corruption concerns might come into play.

I'm all for paying state legislators a little more, I'm okay with paying US legislators somewhat less (as long as too much time isn't wasted on the bill), and I'm very much in favor of the idea, that someone already mentioned, about public financing of campaigns so that legislators can spend more time doing their job, and less time raising money, and so that more Americans, regardless of income level, can have a serious shot at running a solid campaign for elected office.

3/7/2010 1:42:52 AM

^Are you in favor of paying congressmen retirement after they leave office? They are no longer a corruption threat, so why are we continuing to pay them? People shouldn't come to elected positions thinking they will stay so long that they deserve a retirement package.

3/7/2010 10:02:23 AM

For many, being a full time legislator for a while means having no other full time job, and taking 8, 12, or 16 year break from your regular full time job to be a Representative probably isn't that kind to whatever retirement package you're getting there, so I can understand having a retirement package for legislators. I don't know much about the current size of their retirement packages or how it relates to how long they've served, so there may be case for saying it should be reduced, but I have no objection in principle to them getting one.

But then again I have no problem with the idea of professional legislators either with all the experience and institutional memory they bring to the table. I'm in favor of things like public financing so more people can have the option of running for office, and getting a greater mix of "regular people" in with the legislative branch.

I'm not sure I'd want the branch of government that declares war put entirely in the hands of relative newbies. Not having to worry about many reelections may be a good thing in someways since legislators wouldn't be so preoccupied with fundraising (again public financing could help here), but likewise not having to worry about reelections may reduce accountability to the voters.

Campaigns are already expensive, take a long time, take a lot of time away from your family, and you have no guarantee of any of it paying off since you might lose. And we are cutting pay, removing the retirement package, and putting on short term limits it may decentivize qualified people from running.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind seeing the average age of the Congress come down a little, and would be somewhat open to ideas that could help make that happen.

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 10:37 AM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 10:30:10 AM

This thread has signaled who doesn't have any experience in either the state or federal legislature.

3/7/2010 10:58:44 AM

by experience, I don't mean as a legislator

3/7/2010 11:20:29 AM

i don't have first-hand experience. i assume you do? enlighten us.

3/7/2010 11:56:46 AM

Quote :

"how about we just GET RID of the AMT and have a more sensible tax code that doesn't ass-rape the middle-class"

i'm in agreement with getting rid of it

3/7/2010 12:47:40 PM

1. There is no such thing as a part-time legislature. Sure, they are part-time on paper, but in terms of actually doing the job they are full-time.

2. Low legislative pay leads to a legislature full of people who are retired, independently wealthy, or have a job that will allow them to serve (various Fortune 500 companies encourage employees to work as legislators). Low pay creates a barrier that prevents ordinary citizens from running for and becoming legislators because they cannot afford to do the job.

3. Sure, there is a full-time civil staff that handles bill drafting, but that is an over simplification of how laws are drafted and introduced. Bill drafting staffs basically serve the function of making sure the language is uniformed and all affected statutes are accounted for. They do not create the policy.

4. Term limits create a situation whereby the legislature is not run by elected officials, but rather is run by a professional staff that ends up having more control than the legislators themselves.

5. Publicly funded campaigns are not the answer. It lowers the barrier of entry too much and is a waste on the system.

6. Retirement packages are based upon the amount of time served (on the state level) and is no different then the pensions given to other retired state employees. In order to qualify on the federal level you must have been elected twice (House of Rep, don't know about the Senate).

3/7/2010 1:04:01 PM

Quote :

"For many, being a full time legislator for a while means having no other full time job, and taking 8, 12, or 16 year break from your regular full time job to be a Representative probably isn't that kind to whatever retirement package you're getting there"

I'd say that's a good thing. It's an incentive not to hang around forever

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 2:06 PM. Reason : ]

3/7/2010 2:06:41 PM

Quote :

"It's an incentive not to hang around forever not to be in politics in the first place"

or

Quote :

"It's an incentive not to hang around forever to angle to get into lobbying even more quickly than they already do"

3/7/2010 2:27:12 PM

We're talking about a small symbolic cut that follows traditional "performance-based compensation" American values. Congress has done very poorly according to both popular opinion and real performance metrics, and this small pay cut (instead of the standard pay-increase) is a show of solidarity with the rest of the job market. How can congressmen rail against the bonuses to the bailed-out investors without being in-favor of this bill?

Of course, there are pros and cons to any pay adjustment, but you can apply this to any position in any industry.

We're not talking about a massive cut; we're talking about a six-figure salary reduced by a four-figure amount. $174,000 is not some perfect threshold that will let in a flood of idiots if breached. It's not going to break anyone's reelection campaign, nor is it going to crush a political hopeful's dreams.

3/7/2010 2:27:19 PM

not really. congressional approval follows economic indicators very closely.

and what you're really saying is that it's a symbolic move that won't actually do a damn thing

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 2:30 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 2:29:55 PM

^Frankly, if money is what attracts people to the legislature, then our legislature is fucked.

The fact that it follows economic indicators, and the economic indicators themselves, are both reasons for the cut.

And, yes - obvious it's immediately symbolic. Long-term, it's practical.

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 2:33 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 2:30:36 PM

^^^^
that will happen no matter how much they are or aren't paid. In general, scumbags runs for higher political office. It's part of the problem with a de-facto aristocracy.

3/7/2010 2:31:28 PM

if people in our legislature aren't going to get paid what their job is worth, then you're going to get more people who are already wealthy and/or people who are in it to get somewhere else (ie lobbying, appointment, etc)

^so you're okay with making that problem worse?

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 2:32 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 2:32:03 PM

so, again, why not pay them 1 billion a year, just to be careful?>

3/7/2010 2:32:38 PM

there can be no in-between!

let's just make the job minimum wage, just to be safe.

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 2:33 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 2:32:56 PM

Money is not what defines the worth of the position. Not even close.

3/7/2010 2:35:15 PM

Quote :

"5. Publicly funded campaigns are not the answer. It lowers the barrier of entry too much and is a waste on the system. "

I don't think they're a complete answer, but I think they are a part of the answer. And I'd like to see them more for statewide and local offices at the level where regular people can make an entrance into politics. There also need to be certain restrictions, like having to get donations from a certain number of people before you qualify for public financing so that the bar isn't lowered too low, so that money isn't wasted, and that only people who are viewed as somewhat viable/qualified get it, but I think there is a place for more public financing of campaigns in increasing access to elected office to everyone, and in making elected officials less beholden to special interest donations.

3/7/2010 2:35:41 PM

no, sarijoul, let's take away the incentive to hang around for 50 fucking years. That's all I want. And, part of that involves the salary and post-office benefits.

3/7/2010 2:38:22 PM