Redstate

If every GOP Congressman were closer in line with George Allen, the GOP wouldn't be so worried about November this year.

just like 1994, but the last 12 years of GOP control of the house has not resulted in any spending restraint. Newt's failure in 94 is the reason I have been a libertarian for the last 12 years.

The Paycheck Penalty: This legislation that I introduced would withhold the salaries of members of Congress if they do not pass appropriations bills on time. This helps to avoid omnibus spending packages that become great vehicles for wasteful spending

Would your Balanced Budget Amendment allow for overspending when the US is at war?

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. -John Adams

I welcome most of the initiatives you sponsored or suggest. They are all great starts. I am, however, in with Socrates here as well.

Paycheck accountability is nice, but likely to dramatically increase the chances of our political heroes choosing word of mouth in the hallways and around the water cooler rather than actually READING the bills and choosing to vote them up or down based on what they think their constituents would have them vote for or against.

This is not accountability, I am afraid, and we need all you folks up there on the hill to actually DO your jobs (not directed at you, personally, but as you know a great many bills with thousands of pages routinely get voted on well before you guys have a chance to read them all the way through.

As a high level manager for many years I can tell you...out here in the business world, we don't withhold paychecks til they do their jobs...we fire them. We can only fire the non-performing, unproductive, unaccountable among you over periods of years. A better alternative would be to make sure the public record, to a name, indicates who did or did not do their job...who did or did not appear for the vote, who did or did not attend the debates leading up to the vote...so we can make sure we know who to vote for not vote for in subsequent elections. Making the "general population" more readily able to see how they voted would be a nice thing to add to this list. As you know, some level of patience and connection speed is often required to figure out who voted for what.

As with annual performance evaluations with employees, a performance assessment with these types of details...out in broad daylight for all to see, may in fact do better than with holding paychecks...cash flow is not nearly as much of a problem with you guys, than say, people down here in the trenches...staying elected IS.

PS-I have picked YOU in every poll for "who would you choose in '08"...keep making me proud!

Proud to be: politically incorrect, straight, white, pro-life Christian, and of the opinion the spotted owl tastes just like chicken.

We need to cut the salaries of all House of Representatives and Senators to $0.00. (Keep reading, this is more interesting than it may sound right now.) Then, I want to take some insight I gained from Russ Feingold. He argued on the Senate floor that we needed to ban Congressmen from being able to accept $100 meals from lobbyists because congressmen are so cheap that they can be bought with such trifles.

Well, Russ, if you guys are so cheap and cash thirsty, have I got a bribe for you!

The National Debt currently stands at some $8+ trillion. What I propose is that we pass a law that allows that from now until the time that the national debt (not just the annual deficit) is completely eliminated, the only way for Congressmen to boost their take-home pay is through a Bonus system that is tied to how much the national debt - including unfunded liabilities like Social Security and Medicare - is ACTUALLY reduced.

Each and every year, 1% of the national debt that is eliminated in that year is distributed among the lawmakers as follows: 33% to be split among House members, 33% among Senators, and 33% to the executive.

1. House members who vote against budget deficit and debt reducing bills that end up being passed into law get none of the distribution that is attributable to the bills that they vote against.

2. Senators who vote against budget deficit and debt reducing bills that are passed into law get 25% of what the Senators who vote for the bill will get. Senators that attempt to filibuster the bill get nothing from the realized cost savings.

3. The president gets his 33% only if he signs the bill. If the bill's final passage is done over his veto, he gets nothing.

With an $8+ trillion national debt, 1% in bonuses would allow for a total of $80 billion in bonuses. $26.4 billion to each the House, Senate, and President.

Cuts made to defense, intelligence, and national security spending as well as revenues raised through higher taxes would not count towards the congressional bonuses.

We need to cut the salaries of all House of Representatives and Senators to $0.00. (Keep reading, this is more interesting than it may sound right now.) Then, I want to take some insight I gained from Russ Feingold. He argued on the Senate floor that we needed to ban Congressmen from being able to accept $100 meals from lobbyists because congressmen are so cheap that they can be bought with such trifles.

Well, Russ, if you guys are so cheap and cash thirsty, have I got a bribe for you!

The National Debt currently stands at some $8+ trillion. What I propose is that we pass a law that allows that from now until the time that the national debt (not just the annual deficit) is completely eliminated, the only way for Congressmen to boost their take-home pay is through a Bonus system that is tied to how much the national debt - including unfunded liabilities like Social Security and Medicare - is ACTUALLY reduced.

Each and every year, 1% of the national debt that is eliminated in that year is distributed among the lawmakers as follows: 33% to be split among House members, 33% among Senators, and 33% to the executive.

1. House members who vote against budget deficit and debt reducing bills that end up being passed into law get none of the distribution that is attributable to the bills that they vote against.

2. Senators who vote against budget deficit and debt reducing bills that are passed into law get 25% of what the Senators who vote for the bill will get. Senators that attempt to filibuster the bill get nothing from the realized cost savings.

3. The president gets his 33% only if he signs the bill. If the bill's final passage is done over his veto, he gets nothing.

With an $8+ trillion national debt, 1% in bonuses would allow for a total of $80 billion in bonuses. $26.4 billion to each the House, Senate, and President.

Cuts made to defense, intelligence, and national security spending as well as revenues raised through higher taxes would not count towards the congressional bonuses.

Most people have a very simplistic view of the national debt. It isn't like the debt most people have. I'm no economy guru - but private US citizens and foreign countries purchase US government T-Bills and bonds because they are a safe investment. Now granted, countries like China own much of our debt, but so do countries like the UK.

The size of any national debt needs to be balanced against the size of the current GDP, and as a percent it is about ~65.1%. History shows that each time the US has reduced the National Debt in large parts, the country has taken economic downturns. It happend recently after years of slashing military spending in the 90's and inflated tax returns on the bubble NASDAQ market. I've seen other instances going back to the 1800's.

When you reduce the amount of US Government treasuries in circulation, you reduce safe capitol investments and thus slow growth down. It seemed counterintuitive at first, but I highly recommend the Skeptical Optimist website, and many such educational posts such as this:

http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2006/05/fiscal_responsi.html

According to Steve Conover(http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/):

"Fiscal Responsibililty - The body of growth-oriented federal laws and policies that sustain the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio at 60% plus-or-minus 20%."

Emphasis mine. He cuts through the BS when it comes to the National Debt, Trade Deficit and Deficit Spending.

This isn't to say, however, that we shouldn't cut wasteful spending. I firmly believe in slashing wasteful and pointless government programs, i.e. pork. This would allow us to operate the government with a smaller tax burden and kept our GDP to Debt ratio.

I think most of these ideas (except the salary withhold) are GREAT good-government ideas. I am delighted that The Federal Funding Accountability And Transparency Act of 2006 had such bi-partisan support.

I’m convinced that the party that can become the Good Government Party will dominate for the next couple of decades. I don’t see much evidence that the GOP has tried to be that party, given the reckless spending and lack of oversight we’ve witnessed. I would hope that Congress come back into session after the election and, irrespective of the results of that election, actually WORK to enact Good-Government measures, re-invigorate the ethics process, and start investigations of waste and corruption.

Joe

If the Senate and House were to change their rules so that each individual member could vote two ways, straight ticket yes/no, and casting individual votes on each line item, you would, in effect, have implemented a line item veto because *each line item would be its own bill*.

Change the rules of Congress and the IT people will create the systems to allow you to scale things to that number of votes. I don't have a lot of faith that there are working majorities that would be willing to do it but I'll throw it out here just in case I'm wrong. A line item veto could be implemented without constitutional amendment and without court challenge by simply changing how money bills are submitted, debated, and voted on. Leave the debate time the same for the global bill and just say that you can talk about the whole thing or any sub-bill that will be part of the final vote. Since "straight ticket" voting up or down on the bill would register multiple (in practice thousands) votes, it's possible for those who do not want to dig into the whole thing to not change their practice while those who wish to pick at various sections of egregious waste and abuse can do it before the bill ever gets to the President's desk.

And wouldn't it be nice to make the line item veto irrelevant because Congress stripped out the worst of the stuff on its own?