Radical Political Concept

Yesterday Presidential hopeful Rick Perry had an idea that he termed a radical idea. Perry suggested that Congress cut their time in half get paid half. He said that it would also save the country in the long run if they were not working and spending unnecessary tax dollars on.

This is an interesting point, if both houses of congress were to only spend half of their time in Washington and the remainder of their time working in the states they should be living in. This would help them recover from the disconnect they suffer when the live in DC. Professional politicians tend to develop their own agenda once they leave their home state. Many are only concerned about getting re-elected. If this were not the case pork barrel, or ear marks, and all forms of unnecessary spending would be non existent.

Politicians and Term Limits

Another way to fix the problem that exists in Washington would be to set term limits for all politicians. There are politicians that ran on a platform of changing the way they do business in DC. They get elected and seem to get caught up in the vortex and DC social life. They soon forget what they ran on and focus on their re-election rather than the jobs they were elected to do. It is hard to comprehend that politicians will received their salaries for the remainder of their lives. It would be interesting to see how the public would vote on this practice, if they had the chance. It would be safe to say that the majority of Americans would vote against this huge financial unfair drain on the economy.

Politicians and Pay

In the private sector people are paid according to the job they do. In the Government people are paid because they have the job. This difference explains why most of the businesses run by the government are either bankrupt or in need of regular transfusions of cash. Some examples include, Social Security, US Post Office, Amtrax, Medicare, Medicaid, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and too many to list. If a business professional were to put these references on his or her resume, they would not be successful in finding work anywhere. Even while Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac smolder under the meltdown they created top executives will receive millions of dollars in bonuses.

A logical person would be OK with a bonus had they not just been major contributors to the enormous economic meltdown that America is currently going through. The same should be true of all politici1ans. They should be paid on a straight commission basis, or at least according to the job they are doing. This policy alone would break the gridlock currently experienced in Washington. If none of the people who were making the rules got paid until the country was out of debt imagine how quickly a balanced budget would be agreed upon. Skeptics of this thinking say that quality individuals would not be attracted to work for the Government if they weren’t paid well. How well is the “quality” elected talent working out? Do we have quality talent now? Is the Government working now? There are those that would be willing to accept the challenge if they were compensated on the work they do because they know they could accomplish the task at hand.