Kaffis Mark V wrote:
You know.. withholding congressional pay doesn't go far enough for #1.
Withhold the congress-person's pay, that of their staff, and increase their annual tax rate to 100% of all income-generating activities. Revoke their campaign's non-profit status for the year, and jack its tax rate up.
What's that? This makes it really hard for incumbents to campaign against challengers if they don't pass a budget, and they'll probably have to fire their staff (and have a really hard time finding people willing to risk being their staff)? Gosh, darn. Maybe they should take the whole notion of taking ownership of the fiscal state of our nation seriously, then. After all, the entire reason they DON'T pass budgets anymore is so they're not on a black and white record supporting the bankrupting of our nation and can try to weasel their way off the wall when the angry revolution comes.
See, I was thinking about going in the other direction. Changing their paycheck doesn't matter to the rich Senators and Representatives, but the few average Joes who got elected on merit (who may or may not exist in reality) will be hurt. That's also why I support Congressmen/women having a pretty high salary, even though most of them probably don't need it.
So that got me thinking of non-monetary incentives. At first I thought you could hit them with everyday annoyances. Remove french fries from the cafeteria menu. Replace all their seat cushions with ones that are super uncomfortable. Those are kinda retarded, but you might be able to come up with something along those lines that would provide a little more incentive.
But then I realized, if you want to get this **** done and hit them where it hurts, you need to target elections. For every month Congress is late on passing a budget, subtract 1% of their vote totals from their next election. Yeah, it would require a Constitutional amendment and would never happen, but it would
work. They'd be passing budgets like no ones business.