(I know it’s off topic for this blog, I’m sending this to my elected officials in DC and wanted to post it here so voters can see it as well. Is this something you might get behind? -Peng)
Dear Senators John Jerry and Scott Brown, Congressman Michael Capuano, President Barack Obama and all of our elected officials in Washington, DC:
Like many other voters I am appalled at how long it took Congress to pass the 2011 Federal Budget. If our civilian companies took this long to figure out how their revenue would be spent they would be facing a hard time staying open, and at the very least their personal income would take a hit. Unfortunately even if the government had been shut down our elected officials would still be able to draw their salary, which I find very disappointing at the very least.
I want to ask you, my elected federal officials, to please introduce bills in both the U.S. House and Senate to enact penalties for any and all future years that see the federal budget missing at the start of the fiscal year. Allow me to suggest the following penalties that could be assessed to the paychecks for all Congressmen and Senators if our federal government didn’t have a budget on October 1st:
- If the Federal Budget isn’t ready on 1 October, reduce the pay of every Congressman (and -women) and Senator by 25%.
- If the Federal Budget isn’t passed by 1 January (the budget is 3 months late), the pay is reduced to 50% of what they should be getting.
- If there still isn’t a Federal Budget on 1 April (6 moths late), the pay for every U.S. Congressman and Senator is cut to a mere 25% of the full amount they are entitled to.
- If the U.S. Government is shut down due to a lack of a Federal Budget, the pay for our Congressman and Senators is shut down as well, with their checks being reinstated only when there is a federal budget. In addition, there is to be no retroactive pay for our elected officials when the work of our government is allowed to resume.
I know these measures are rather harsh, but the past year has shown me that our elected officials in Washington, D.C. can spend more time fighting about politics than actually getting down to the business the voters elected them to conduct. The incremental deductions can be modified as needed to send the bill to the President’s desk for his signature, but please make sure that the restrictions on all pay in the event of a government shutdown remains in the final bill. I trust that may be a very powerful enticement to actually getting budgets passed. I also suspect penalties like these may have gone a long way to preventing the possible shutdown of our government that we had to deal with last week.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to seeing how the measure progresses through Congress.
Respectfully,
J.M. Hardin
Boston, MA
