Back to the real world
July 19, 2011, 1:07 pm
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
E.J. Dionne at Commonweal online: “Every member of Congress who got us into this debt-ceiling fight should be docked six months pay. They wasted our time on political posturing instead of solving problems. Better yet, the voters might ponder firing them next year. This could do wonders for national productivity.”
Including some Democrats!
Would that this whole debacle did show at least some signs of dealing with the real world.
“Every member of Congress who got us into this debt-ceiling fight should be docked six months pay.”
Similarly, every member of Congress who voted for the Affordable Health Care Act should be required to be insured under its provisions, along with their staff. If it is so wonderful, they should want to do so, no?
Lincoln: “although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”
“Every member of Congress who voted for the Affordable Health Care Act should be required to be insured under its provisions, along with their staff. If it is so wonderful, they should want to do so, no?”
How about all of us get the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan that they already have!
Margaret, as an enrollee in the FEHBP, I endorse your suggestion. I’ve been very satisfied with my benefits over the years.
I accept your offer!
Margaret writes (2:20 pm):
I had it for twenty years. My wife had an Ohio public employees’ program. Hers was much better.
There are upwards of 40 million un/under-insured Americans who will take ANY program that they can get!
Why not give them the best!
Jimmy (4:46 pm):
Even after Affordable Care?
Isee Mark etc. ahve signed on with (I like Jimmy Mac;s word) the troglodytes who go on and on about the Health care bill.
Meanwhile the gang of six has reemerged and offerd some hope, if the twinkies don’t block anything but their own view.
Forty million uninsured Americans? Is that why some of our congressional “representatives” (if that’s what they really are) assure us that we have the best health care system in the world?
This suggestion exists purely in the realm of the hypothetical, but since we’re discussing one proposal that’ll never happen (docked pay for Congress), why not another?
Once Congress fails to pass a budget by the designated time, all the Members, as well as the President, are prohibited from any and all campaign activities until a budget is passed. No fundraising, no campaign ads, no phone calls to local captains regarding registration numbers and volunteer recruitment.
It potentially would be a nightmare of new monitoring to assign to the FEC, but that would (hopefully) provide sufficient impetus to avoid this sort of impasse in the first place.
Excellent idea. But the FEC is so toothless it’s hard to imagine they could monitor, or agree to monitor, a ban on campaign activities. Even so, we can put it in the bin of other good ideas that are going nowhere.