Random, discombobulated, but... somehow very important to me.
If we want our country to be a better place, the people running it need to be better people. Not smarter. Not younger. Not "more in touch." Better. They need to be civil servants and they need to know that their job is to make this country grow. Much like a parent needs to know when they have to be the friend and when they have to be the disciplinarian, our government needs to learn that following the whim of the crowd is a sure way to end up exactly where we are now. Debt up to our eyeballs, divided, angry, weak, and bitter.
So. To keep the folks in the legislature in the place they need to be:
1- No elected official (Edited per comments on 2/19 at 1031 PST) will have an income greater than 110% of the median income of their constituents. These people are civil servants first and foremost. They SERVE the people, not lord over them. If there are people in your constituency struggling to put food on their table, you should not be debating your third car on their dime. If the cost of living at the capitol is too high, Uncle Sam can build dorms. Nice, secure, somewhat posh dorms, sure. But dorms. You do not need a brownstone and a limo for the six months you're working when there are people losing their homes in droves electing you.
2- Armed forces will get access to the same insurance plan that congress gets at the same cost. If the people sending our friends and family off to die get amazing health coverage on the public dime, the people actually losing their limbs do too. It's that simple. There is exactly zero logical or emotional way of supporting the idea that men and women in suits in some of the most protected buildings in the country have better healthcare than the men and women we send overseas to fight and die in our names. That has to stop right now. RIGHT NOW.
3- When your job ends, so do your benefits. I've been in the corporate world for a decade now. I've changed jobs a number of times. I've yet to continue getting paid, insured, or compensated by an employer after leaving the company. Time for our government to be "of the people" again and realize that when you leave your job, it's over. You don't get a pension for four years of service. You don't get health insurance on the public dime for the rest of your life. You are one of us, you live like one of us. You cannot legislate for your constituents if you are unable to grasp the situation we are in.
4- Barring top secret/high clearance work, every meeting, every committee, every governmental email, every document and every version of every bill is public. You work for us. We pay your salary. We buy your computers, cars phones, and everything else you use for your living. Your entire job is to work to make our country a better place. My employer makes me sign a notice that my data is theirs. Your data is ours. You make good money- go buy a private cell phone if you want to send dick pictures, flirt with pages, or tell your bros how many of our jobs you'll trade for a vote on your bill.
5- There will be no more than two people (or twenty percent, whichever is smaller) on a committee who are not well-versed on the subject of the bill. If you have no background in education, you do not debate the merits of standards-based curricula. If you have never been trained in the use of a firearm, you do not debate the merits of firearms training. If you have no medical background, you do not debate... You get the idea. There is no reason for people with no background in science or in education to be debating science education. It's detrimental. Stop it.
More to come but if I ever run for office, I'm gonna have a weird platform.
1) Not "government employee"- "elected official". For a lot of people, public service jobs are a way out of shit-hole neighborhoods. And you'll never get teachers in the neighborhoods that need them most if pay is based on the income of the school district.
ReplyDeleteMy proposal for elected officials is more complex, but (I think) better to make sure that the pols are tied to the people they represent.
1) If elected to federal office, all existing assets must be placed in trust, and new income sources also go in trust. (While in office, you must live on the income from the office.)
2) Upon election to first term, salary is equal to 110% of national mean income, plus an amount equal to the difference between the mean income of your constituency versus the national mean. (Representing a low-income district pays better.)
3) Upon re-election, pay increases or decreases by the same percentage that the mean income for your district increased or decreased. (Improve pay in your district, get a raise.)
4) Benefits package for all federal employees is exactly the same. You get the same coverage as the lowest paid page in your office.
5) If your district is more than 300 miles from Washington DC, you get 2 coach-class round-trip tickets per month to travel to/from your district. If you live within 300 miles, you get 2 round-trip train tickets.
6) A Secure van-pool will be established between the DC home of representatives and the Capitol. It will run on a fixed schedule. All other transportation is at the expense of the representative.
Agreed on the modification of "elected official."
ReplyDeleteAs for your version- why the trust? 2 and 3 I like. 4 I LOVE. 5/6 seem ok to me also.
I suspect the trust is an attempt to isolate the elected official from other forms of compensation while in office, and to help ensure they're not improving personal revenue at the expense of sound public policy.
ReplyDeleteI think THIS is how one limits terms. Make it so it's not a job that's attractive to anyone for a 20+ year career. I really don't like the idea of term limits because if the people of Massachusetts really wanted Ted Kennedy to be their senator for so long, they should be afforded the opportunity to have him there. But if we make holding office for fifteen or more years something that requires serious financial sacrifice I would suspect that many career politicians at the federal level would leave much sooner than they do now.
Dad nailed it. You have to actually live on your paycheck, like most of us do. This becomes all the more important if we actually reform the pay. Term limits, arguably, aren't a restriction on the politicians, but on the voters. The argument "We already have term limits: they're called elections." is valid. To use a completely silly analogy, what if TV stars had term limits? Seems like a great idea when you look at the Kardashians or Ryan Seacrest. But then look at Mr. Rogers... the idea's not so great any more.
ReplyDelete1. I have a hard time with this because of the age restrictions on running for office and because most people go to Congress as a transition from one career to public service. I’m leaning toward representatives having an income equivalent to their most recently held position with a minimum of the median income and maximum of $250k. I like this idea because it allows experts and the educated to join Congress without sacrificing their lifestyle. For example, the median income of Denver is right around $60k. If I’m a doctor with kids in college, I might not be able to afford the pay cut associated with being in Congress.
ReplyDeleteReally, if we want to attract the “best” people, shouldn’t we pay them adequately? I don’t think a hedge fund manager, CEO, or professional athlete needs to have their million dollar salaries transfer over, but we also don’t want to limit the options of smart and motivated people to run for elected office. By cutting the salary so drastically, you’re basically putting anyone with a family out of the running unless they’re already millionaires. I don’t see a problem with paying our representatives high salaries. We ask them to do the most difficult work and to do it publicly. We’re asking them to be educated, ethical, and hard working. Why not pay them? Isn’t that free market principles at work? Raise the pay and benefits to attract the best and the brightest?
2. Sure… why not?
But, shouldn’t we want to provide the best insurance to everyone, regardless of their status as a government employee or not?
3. I strongly dislike this unless you are implying we have term limits. If I’m in Congress for 25 years I better have a retirement plan that covers me. If you want to insure that only millionaires go to Congress, this will do it. No way would I run for office if knew that I wouldn’t get any type of retirement, or if I was solely responsible for it. I’ll accept a 401k version of retirement planning with government matching that I can transfer if I leave Congress for another job or for when I retire. But, by doing the 401k instead of a pension style program, you’re basically opening the door for some massive corruption as lawmakers rig the system to boost the stock market for personal gain.
4. This is already the case for the most part. The difficult part is determining what is and is not national security. But, you can’t just record every meeting/email and make that public. It ruins the devil’s advocate role and puts all of our representatives on “extreme PC status” where they can’t discuss hard choices out of fear of their open dialogue being taken out of context. For example, what if I’m meeting with a lobbyist and in the process we want to cover all of the “what if” scenarios regarding fracking. If that meeting is public, I can’t do that out of fear of looking like an extremist when those quotes are taken out of context and plastered all over the media. I think the Freedom of Information Act is ok where eventually all of those records are released, but no way would I support that in real time.
5. How are you going to ensure that two doctors are on the Senate Committee for health? What happens if only one health professional exists in the Senate? While I like the idea, I don’t see how it’s practical in that you can’t force the Senate to have an equal representation of professionals so you can fill the committees.
Really, if you want “better” people in Congress, start with campaign finance reform. Make sure that candidates are beholden to the voters and not the donors. That will do more to correct the problem than any of the above.
Ultimately, I think we need to focus on opening the election process so it is easier for the average person to run. Right now, candidates have to work their way in via the party or be lucky enough to be born into the system. This pretty much ensures that the people on the ballot are "more of the same" and we don't get fresh ideas or uncorrupted members. The election process places donors ahead of voters and parties ahead of personal ethics. Our system actively prevents the average person from running for office. We need to open the doors so more people have access to run for office. At the same time, we need to make the job worth it. Why would I leave my teaching job to run for Congress if I'm going to get paid less, have no retirement, and be constantly ridiculed in the media?
ReplyDeleteThe solution is not the punish the elected officials by lowering salaries or eliminating their pensions. In this case, we need more democracy, not less. We need more people running for office with legitimate chances of winning and to make the job desirable for the ethical and hard working citizens. We don't want to set it up so only millionaires can afford to spend time in Congress, or requiring a middle class family to take out a second mortgage to make it work. At the same time, I think if we crush the benefits and decrease the pay without significantly reforming the system, the elected body will find another way to "get paid" and if we thought there was corruption now, we'd be in for some serious Russian style corruption in the future.
Joe- Why do you wanna bring logic and reasonable discourse into this? :) All good points, and thanks for making me think through things again! You must be a great educator.
ReplyDeletejte