18 Dec 2018 How Much Should Congress Make?

How Much Should Congress Make?

There was a lot of news earlier this year when Apple became the first Company to be valued at $1 trillion. The 535 members of Congress of which 435 are in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate create a budget each year of over two trillion dollars. The salary for a congressman is $174,000 per year. The Speaker of the House gets $223,500. If the saying goes you get what you pay for then we are vastly underpaying our representatives. If you want competent members then you have to be willing to pay for them. You can talk all day long about public service, but I would rather have competence over political ambitions.

I would make two changes to the Constitution. People in the House of Representatives can hold office for two 4 year terms and Senators can have one term of office of six years. I would pay each $500,000 a year. There would be no retirement other than what they can fund for a Roth IRA. I don’t want career politicians and I don’t want politicians to get a lifetime retirement for a short stay of public service.

You will not be able to convince me that there is any value of having a person be in Congress for many years and even many decades. It is proven many times over it takes no special talent to be a member of Congress, especially in intelligence capacity. We need to change that.

I want to attract the best and brightest to help run the country, but I also don’t want them there for a long time. If the President has term limits, there’s absolutely no reason members of Congress can’t too.  Let’s get the best there and pay them too.