COMMENTARY | Members of Congress will make $165,200 this year, with the exception of the majority leaders and speaker of the house. The senate majority and minority leaders will make $183,500 and the Speaker of the house will make $212,100. There are 530 rank and file members of Congress. A calculator and 15 seconds will tell you that the sum of salaries paid to federal legislators is $88,502,100.
The federal government proposed a budget for 2011 of $3.69 trillion.
The salaries of Congress members amount to 0.0024 percent of the total spending for the year. This means that if the members of Congress were to forego getting paid completely, and the pay rate never changed, it would take just over 41,573 years for their "sacrifice" to cover this year's spending.
Change that $3.69 trillion into $14.2 trillion, our current national debt, and it would take 159,550 years to recover the debt by not paying legislators.
I'm not the type of person who likes defending the government. That's not what I'm doing here, but most of what I've been reading in the comments sections of articles regarding the government shutdown or budget issues have been attacking legislators, asking them to take pay cuts and reduce their benefits. While it feels great to bash congressmen and release our anger on a scapegoat that we might or might not have voted for, this line of ideas won't help. It's not feasible to recover trillions of dollars by picking up quarters off the sidewalk.
Speaking of quarters off the sidewalk, the government shutdown was averted "heroically" Friday night after the agreement was made to cut $38.5 billion from spending. Everybody still have their calculators out? (elapse 15 seconds) This spending reduction, as I'm sure you figured out, equates to 1.04 percent of this year's spending.
If you asked most Americans to cut 1 percent of their spending for the year, it would likely mean that they would have to hold off from eating out at that nice restaurant once a month with their family. I have a feeling that the government is going to do what we all do when we decide not to eat out, they'll just order in, spend most of the money anyway, but feel good about themselves because they didn't have to pay a tip. I'm keeping my calculator out and I hope you do, too. If anyone figures out a real way to reduce spending and debt in this nation, let me know.
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