QOTD — A Modest Proposal on Legislator Pay

Over the past week or so there has been a fair amount of press on the salary givebacks planned by President Obama, SecDef Hagel and other Cabinet Members — salary givebacks meant to show some shared sacrifice with Federal workers getting ready to live with enforced furloughs. There’s been a yawning silence from members of Congress on sharing that sacrifice, and you’d think that the conservative ones (especially!) would be rushing to the paymaster’s office to do their bit to help put a stop to out of control spending, right? There also seems to be a minor industry in the press monitoring whether or not Joe Biden will give back any of his pay — apparently he will if his staff is hit with sequester cuts. AG Holder will give back part of his salary if his staff is hit with the sequester cuts. For most of these folks, the salary givebacks aren’t much of a financial sacrifice, so there is a good bit of show in these gestures. But in contrast to Congress — who have bought the out of control spending bullshit lock stock and Pete Peterson barrel — the Executive does look like they are taking this situation abit more seriously. So what about it Senators Carper and Coons, Rep, Carney? You guys voted for every bit of this burden on federal workers, departments and services — time for your shared sacrifice too.

Anyway, for the QOTD — I saw this proposal on Facebook the other night and — frankly — this makes sense to me. If we are focused like a laser beam on compensating *teachers* for effectiveness (and for effectiveness over factors they can’t always control), why not compensate legislators the same way? What do you think?