When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers must find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well.
Wall street and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of "tough decision", and the board of directors gives upper corporate management big bonuses.
Our government should not be immune from similar risks.
Therefore:
Reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218 members.
Reduce Senate members from 100 to 50(one per State). Then, reduce their remaining staff by 25%.
Accomplish this over the next 8 years (two steps/two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.
Some Yearly Monetary Gains Include:
$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress. (267 members X $165,200 pay/member/ yr.)
$437,100,000 for elimination of their staff. (Estimate $1.3 Million in staff per each member of the House, and $3 Million in staff per each member of the Senate every year)
$108,350,000 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.
$7,500,000,000reduction in pork barrel earmarks each year. (Those members whose jobs are gone. Current estimates for total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion/yr).
The remaining representatives would need to work smarter and improveefficiencies. It might even be in their best interests to work together for the good of our country!
We may also expect that smaller committees might lead to a more efficient resolution of issues as well. It might even be easier to keep track of what your representative is doing.
Congress has more tools available to do their jobs than it had back in 1911 when the current number of representatives was established. (Telephone, computers, cell phones to name a few)
Note:
Congress does not hesitate to head home for extended weekends, holidays and recesses, when what the nation needs is a real fix for economic problems. Also, we had 3 senators who were not doing their jobs for the 18+ months (on the campaign trail) and still they all accepted full pay. Minnesota survived very well with only one senator for the first half of this year. These facts alone support a reduction in senators and congress.
Summary of opportunity:
$44,108,400 reduction of congress members.
$282,100,000 for elimination of the reduced house member staff.
$150,000,000 for elimination of reduced senate member staff.
$70,850,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining house members.
$37,500,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining senate members.
$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork added to bills by the reduction of congress members.
$8,084,558,400 per year, estimated total savings. (That's 8-BILLION just to start!)
Corporate America does these types of cuts all the time.
There's even a name for it.
"Downsizing."
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Also, if Congresspersons were required to serve 20, 25 or 30 years (like everyone else) in order to collect retirement benefits, taxpayers could save a bundle.
Now they get full retirement after serving only ONE term.
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IF you are happy with how Washington spends our taxes, delete this message.
Otherwise, it's time to "downsize" Congress.
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Please consider forwarding, if you agree.
I have cleaned this e-mail of all other names, By copying and pasting it, I'm sending it to you in hopes that you will keep it going and keep it clean. This is something I believe in and I hope you all read it all the way through.
The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months and 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 before computers, before
e-mail, before cell phones, etc.
Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land, all because of public pressure.
I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.
In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.
Congressional Reform Act of 2012
1. Term Limits. 12 years only, one of the possible options below.
A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
2. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
3. Congress (past , present and future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.
4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
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6 comments:
Wow! A whole 8 billion a year! That's like... the same cost as about a week of the Iraq occupation.
But how great it will be for those who buy our politicians like so many candy bars. Now they'll only half to buy 1/2 as many in order to control Congress, and because races will be even more expensive only the biggest, richest players will be in a position to buy. Brilliant!
Not tracking on reality again, I see.
Cut Congress in half? Piece of cake.
Here's how we do it:
1. Get 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate to vote for such a bill. Sure, they'd vote for a bill to eliminate half of their jobs.
2. Get legislatures of 3/4 of the states to ratify the bill once passed. Not a problem, since no member of any state legislature aspires to become a member of Congress.
Yeah, we can probably get this done in short order.
Makes no sense on many levels. Yes, it would save some money, but it's just distraction.
Where the real waste occurs is with the Military Industrial Complex & the giant DoD budget. Where are conservatives talking about this? Yoohoo: don't hear you!!
Like ferschitz, I agree that this is just more rightwing propoganda sent out to distract the low-information voters. Sounds good in theory but will never ever happen, and even if it did, wouldn't really "do much" to save money.
Plus conservatives are reliably mis-led to rant & tirade about so-called "pork spending." Is there wasteful spending? Yes, but again, most of it is with no-bid government contracts for War (looking at you, Dick Cheney), not with local projects that are usually funded by so-called "pork" money.
And often those "pork" projects do - heaven forfend! - actually provide jobs to middle and working class citizens.
Remember Bobby Jindal whining about Volcano monitoring, when it's actually needed and provides jobs??? Or ridiculous Sarah Palin complaining about fruit fly research, when such research has led to advances in assisting people with disabilities, amongst other things (while also providing jobs).
Junk like this is a waste of time and pixels.
Can I just say that I don't think a country should be run like a publicly-traded company? See 2008 for my reasoning.
Yea downsize congress, that will fix everything. Why don't we just downsize it all and have 1 ruler in charge? I think it has been done before with glowing results...
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