I Had An Idea!

I was watching Glenn Beck a little while ago, I still check in on Glenn a couple of times a week, just for giggles. Sometimes I wonder, if Glenn didn't talk about god all the time, what would I think of him? Do I let his constant references to faith and the creator and values negatively color my whole view of him. If Glenn were an atheist, would I still call him crazy all the time? Of course I would! Glenn's really wandered round the bend lately, but he's still as good for a laugh as he ever was.

Alas, this isn't about Glenn. While I was checking in on Glenn today, he mentioned that members of Congress make $175,000 a year, which seems to be more or less correct (as usual, I refuse to put more than 47 seconds of research into this, but I quickly found that the base salary for Congress is $174,000, and the leadership makes more, so the average is probably right around $175,000. Glenn must have taken a trip to reality to get that number, I hope he enjoyed it).

I've heard this number, or a rough estimate around it, many times before. It never bothers me, I don't care how much other people make and I generally respect the right of a person to earn whatever someone else is willing to pay them. That argument is a little more convoluted with Congress, because they vote on their own salary, so it's more like they're earning whatever they can get away with paying themselves before we riot. Still, I don't begrudge them their six figures. But today, I had an idea.

I propose we tie Congress' salaries directly to the national average wage. If the average salary of a regular working person is, say, $40,000/yr, that's what we pay Congress. When the country is doing better, Congress does better. When something bad happens, like say, a Republican President, we'll call him Donald Deagan, starts off a 30 year period of setting the economy on fire and putting it out with peasant tears, then Congress suffers a little too.

Would this cut the deficit? Not really. All the money we'd save cutting Congressional salaries would probably be enough to buy us one extra F-35 fighter jet. But it would be a nice symbolic budget cut, and since symbolic budget cuts are probably all we're getting anyway, this would be as good as any.

Do I really think this would change Congress' behavior? I don't know, maybe not. I doubt we've got a lot of people in Congress who are in it for the money (not the legit money anyway). Plus, you could argue a policy like this would create a disincentive for the best and the brightest to get into Government. That's a perfectly reasonable argument, but the current Congress isn't exactly a brain trust. You'll have a pretty hard time getting me worried about damaging the intellectual quality of Congress.

On the plus side, I could see how this could happen. First of all, politicians get voters to vote against their own interests all the time, so obviously that's possible. Secondly, wouldn't this be awesome politics. Can't see you pundits on Fox and MSNBC lauding the courageous politicians willing to cut their own salaries in order to cut spending and send a message about fiscal responsibility and solidarity with the people? How could one party publicly oppose this?

Obviously, this isn't going to happen. Look, we're at a point in time when the fortunes of the people running the country have nothing to do with the fortunes of everyone else. Why not look for a way to tie them together, just a little. So, I had an idea, not the most actionable idea I've ever had, and I'm probably not the first person to think of it, but there it is. I thought I'd share.

Ps...after I posted this, I got a little curious and found out that this is in no way an original idea, many people have had it, including some crazy people. You know what, if I had a whole bunch of totally original ideas that nobody ever thought of before, I'd be rich and I wouldn't have to go to work anymore. You can still enjoy the jokes.