Make the US Congress a Part Time Job?

[Coito ergo sum]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45572.html

Well...they're paying a more than full time salary for the actual part-time results we're getting from Congress, so I say - yes.

Pay them $70,000 a year for 20-30 hours a week, and have done with it. They aren't worth the $174,000 a year (plus fully paid for health, vision, dental and other perquisites). With everything they get, we're probably paying them more like double that, and that's no including what hey all skim off the top by using their positions for personal gain.

Cut their hours!

[GreyICE]

And this will effect the US budget how exactly?

These moves are the most unbelievably pointless things ever. Oh gee, we save a few million, let me dance with joy and glee.

[Coito ergo sum]

It would effect the US Budget in a couple different ways. One, it would give them less time to spend money we don't have, so they may slow down coming up with new money wasters.

Two, just because an amount of money is small doesn't mean it shouldn't be saved. I am positive there are thousands of different ways in which millions of dollars could be saved, and those ways could easily add up to billions of dollars.

Analogizing the situation to a business, what will often be done in the business world is management will look at each department and see where "fat" can be cut. Any one cut may be miniscule in relation to the budget shortfall at issue, but when they are all added up it turns into real money. Maybe the company spends too much on paper - there's hundred thou. Maybe it can cut a middle manager out and make do with less - there's a hundred thou. Maybe another department can renegotiate a shipping contract - rely less on postage --- or, do a myriad other things that can help the bottom line. It's never an answer to say, "oh, this budget cut doesn't mean anything relative to the total shortfall" -- because every dollar counts as much as every other dollar. Waste is waste.

And, analogizing it to daily life, most people could save a ton of money in their lives if they minded the small expenditures. Buying lunch out every day can easily cost $1250 (or even more these days) in a year more than bringing a modest lunch to work each day. For someone making an above-average salary of $50,000 a year, that's 2.5% of annual gross income. That's not peanuts.

I can't imagine their being less than $400,000,000,000 in pure waste in our government spending out of $4,000,000,000,000 total spending (or thereabouts). 10% waste seems a bit of a conservative estimate, given the fact that nobody has ever gone through and actually audited and cut fat to manage budgets like someone who didn't have a captive revenue stream would do.

[Robert_S]

I say we pay them less so that they will not forget what it's like to live on less. Maybe we should tie it to the average income of the middle 50% of the population.

[Coito ergo sum]

I say we pay them less so that they will not forget what it's like to live on less. Maybe we should tie it to the average income of the middle 50% of the population.

I don't disagree. I think that the $174,000 a year, plus the unparalleled benefits package they get is a gross overpayment.