Give Congress personal incentives to be more frugal
Re: “Cut their pay, keep them at home,” Editorial, March 9
Regardless of whether Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick’s call to cut Congressional pay is grandstanding or personal conviction, it is a short-term concession that would be more for show than a solution to the unsustainable spending we have been allowing for decades.
If we tie Congressional pay to first balancing the budget, and secondly to paying off a percentage of the national debt, I believe we could make some headway.
Under our current system, our representatives and senators are encouraged to spend not only on their home districts, but also on the nation as a whole. They have little incentive to restrain themselves.
By giving them a pay increase each year for balancing and paying down the national debt, and decreasing it by the same percentage is they failed to meet these goals, they wound have to choose between pork and their own interests. This would also apply to their staffers so they would not be able to “take one for the team” and accept less pay in return for a spending spree.
This might be the only way to restrain those we vote into office. At some point, they would apply the brakes on spending and be forced to become more responsible. Both parties have clearly displayed that they will not do this on their own.
Gregg Gaut
Washington
Overpaid government employees are cause of financial crisis
In Montgomery County where I live, the county attempts to match federal pay and benefits on the grounds that it must be “competitive.” It thus feels it must pay its average employee twice as much as an employee with the same skills and doing the same job would be paid in the private sector. Of course, the county is unwilling to release the details of its pay practices – and a supine press lets them get away with this secretiveness.
This is the also the case in New Jersey, which recently declared a state of financial emergency, and in most states and counties, particularly those controlled by public employee unions.
In failing to even look at or discuss pay and benefits of its state employees, Virginia did an incompetent job of dealing with its budget problems.
Richard C. Kreutzberg
Chevy Chase
Job market won’t recover under double threat
As in the legend of Damocles, in which a 4th century Greek courtier was forced to lie under a sword suspended by a single hair, the twin swords of Obamacare and cap & trade hang perilously over recovery of the American job market. Yet the President and Congress remain obsessed with the political hegemony offered by excessive government control of the American economy that these twin coercions bestow. Such “change” invites further government intrusion, bureaucracy, higher taxes and control of the private sector These twin swords will maneuver America away from the demand economy that propels free enterprise into a central command economy reminiscent of the failed USSR. The supreme irony is that not long ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin cautioned Obama on implementing socialism. Is this the change we voted for?
Tony Favero
Half Moon Bay, CA
