Nancy Pelosi “I don’t think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do. I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded…“

How can she say that when people are losing there jobs and people are not getting raises every year if at all, and I know many people that have had pay cuts. Its like she does not realize that the money they get comes from taxes. Shouldn't there reward be serving the people of the US, I agree they need compensation for there work but $174,000 per year, seams a bit much to me.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Yeah people who make the most important decisions in the country should be paid minimum wage to attract the best and brightest away from the private sector where they could already be making orders of magnitude more money than they currently do.

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Yeah we quite obviously have the best and brightest the private sector has to offer in congress atm

"the futures' so bright I gotta wear shades"

So you're saying paying $174k a year - substantially less than any congressperson could make at a private firm - is too much?

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If the company was\is failing because of them yes it is too much. If they were in the private firm and the company was failing they would not have a job, but yet some how these people keep getting reelected.



You missed my point, they work for the people.The people of the US have to make sacrifices because things are not going good financially, why should congress not have to feel the same pain? Congress making 3 times the average US salary is nuts, they are not the best or the brightest, they are average at best.

Congress was never intended to be a career, it was meant for some people who chose\wanted to server the people of the US to do so. Somewhere it got corrupted (I guess power and greed will do that)to be a career for people where only the very very wealthy can get elected to.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Are you held accountable by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis who have the opportunity to make you unemployed every four years? The actual "work" of politics isn't what demands the salary, it's the responsibility. Nothing about that is average, and saying so is absurdly reductive.

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High accountability does not equal high salary. You also hit on another good point US congress should not be accountable for hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis (they are not doing it daily by the way), the respectability of the US congress needs to be focused on things outside the US and let the states govern the people of there own state.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

That is entirely your opinion, and the reason executives demand high salaries is not because of their unique skill in their company's specific field, but because they are capable of handling the responsibility. Do you think a billionaire CEO of a bank or an auto company got to that point because they can count or drive a car better than anyone else?

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nope

Do you think a billionaire CEO would keep his job if he did not have a budget and the company was spending more then it was making?

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Maybe not forever, but when he left, he would take $20 million in severance with him.


If you paid Congress minimum wage, who do you think will run? People capable of handling a multi-trillion dollar budget?

Private executives, much like the President, are responsible for oversight and policy, not literally writing the budget. Many executives remain employed while their organization operates at a loss, and few organizations have shareholder voting to determine the hiring of executives. The similarities between the President and a CEO are few, and no amount of reductive Tea Party logic can equate the two things. If the country were a corporation, I would be owed dividends for my investment.

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I was gonna list all the names of the degenerate congressmen and senators and the crimes they committed from the last 3 years but as has been often said on these boards noone likes to read paragraph posts.

Let alone the asstastic stalemate gridlock that is our current Govt

Best and the Brightest the private sector has to offer are in Congress for sure !

You won't get any argument from me that the current sitting Congress isn't a complete shit-show, but the principle of not paying them has pretty severe implications toward the quality of service we're able to get out of these people. You can say the system has failed several times to elect a functional legislative body, and you'd be right, but the way to fix it is to fix it, instead of fucking it up forever because you don't like how it is right now.

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Increase tax revenue by getting rid of Congress's special tax loop holes. Along with all of the rest of the other loop holes. Make tax easy and simple. Get the IRS up to date and allow people to file taxes online through the IRS website.

And for fucks sake I mean ALL loop holes. If you want to promote something by throwing money at it, do not do it with tax breaks. Just throw money at it.

Oh yeah. And cut spending.

Why does it have to be one or the other. Do both....

FairTax.org

It isn't the best solution, but a hell of a lot better than what we have now or anything else that has been proposed.

As far as I am concerned, Congress is decidedly part of the problem... but not because of their salary.



The only problem is that I don't know how we fix this problem when only the super wealthy have the ear and attention of legislators, short of an election system where we say: "Hey, here's your $200 to run a campaign on. Good luck" and outlaw other fund raising. Even then, the money would find a way to influence them in its own best interests.

*.02 hitting the pile*

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I never said pay them minimum wage, but I don't think they need to get paid as much as they are. I do think that lowering the pay would encourage congress not to make a carrer out of it.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

And I think teachers and policy makers should be paid as much as possible, and the competition for those jobs should be astounding. Paying less for those important positions just sends the people who want to do those jobs to the private sector.

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Thats what is going on right now, and its not working at all. So we should what tripple there salary? So we get people that want to do the job of serving the people of the US and not just for a Job?

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

That's what is going on now? Are you serious?

You are wrong.

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Hahahahaha. When I finish my MFA and go apply for a lecturer position, I'll make sure to link this post to my potential employers so they give me a fair salary. Heaven forbid they offer me too much money.

I feel that every position that the government holds and pays should take a %10 to %20 paycut over 2 years. Probably would have saved some peoples jobs and still save this stupid country some money.

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

To be fair, I think he was referring to congressional salaries when he said "this is what is going on now" as opposed to teacher salaries.

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The disparity in wages for government jobs varies from near minimum wage positions to those paid upwards of half a million per year. Cutting every government employee's wages by 10-20% is ridiculous.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Maybe a better solution would be to pay Representatives and Senators the median income in their home state.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I would have no issue with that.

Most of the government employees where I work (DoD) earn about 10-15% less than they would in the private sector as it is. And before folks say 'then take those jerbs', those are generally contractor positions that tax dollars pay for anyway. The work doesn't go away if we do. Someone will get paid by the government to do it.

I can't speak for places apart from those I work with directly, but we've had several years of pay/hiring freezes on top of a push to get rid of contracts already. So we did that and dropped ~50 people, then we have to absorb more as part of the sequester. Unfortunately the only option we had after that was to cut internships, grants, and scholarships. After that it'll be more contractors and then equipment. It's been silly. At any rate a furlough is not a pay reduction, so there is nothing to make permanent except a 32 hour work week with the same benefits.

There's a lot of redundancy and waste, but the sequester is not designed to address that at all. Nor is it designed to save money. Our budget is increasing this and next FY, we just can't use it for people or interns. I imagine we'll just do a replacement of old hardware or something.

Be dead honest and blunt.

No congressman. or president, runs, and serves for the money they make in the salary offered.

You could reduce the amount of money they make to literally ZERO, and see little difference in the money they make while in office.

Sponsorship, donations, campaign money, pork barrel spending in laws, "ad infinitum", stuff that is LEGAL, usually makes politicians a shit-ton of money during their time of service.

Removing or lowering their salary yet leaving the laws as they are, wouldn't stop ANYONE from running for politics, on a national level anyway.

Colbert made a huge point months back with his super pac, somehow he was able to write a check from the pac, to something else, and the money legally VANISHED, right into his pocket. If you don't think politicians do that, or something similar, ALL the time; you are naive.

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"People sometimes say that ideas cannot be stamped out by force. The Albigensian Crusade proves them wrong. Ideas can be stamped out by the elimination of everyone who holds the ideas." - Quote :"Middle Ages" by Morris Bishop.

I should have made my statement clearer, I was meaning the higher up government positions. And to piggyback with others, I agree that is a great suggestion.

_________________
"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

I'd also agree that no one working for the government should be earning over $180k, which is the cap for General Officer level civilians (of which there are few). If it's true there are many earning over that then it should get nipped in the bud asap.

I'd also be in favor of limiting pension funding to the GS15 step 10 level. If someone makes over that for a number of years and can't fund retirement they are mentally unbalanced.

They are payed too much and with the economy in the shitter all they can agree on is a pay raise. They should be payed no more than 80k a year at most for the amount of time put into their jobs and still get nothing done. Took me 15 years at my job to break the 6 digit mark.

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PAID, MOTHER FUCKER. Hose gets payed. People get paid. It probably took you 15 years to hit the 6 digit mark because HR didn't know what the fuck you meant when you started asking for a rays.

I laughed at the 'rays' comment.