It seems like a fair idea. Congress, over the years, has created the fiscal issues facing the country. The ongoing Congressional follies have so offended voters that something around 80% have a negative opinion of congress. Not paying employees that are not doing their job seems like a fairly good idea. Actually firing them seems to Common Sense like a better idea, but sadly that's not on the table.
But is not paying Congress a good idea?
For openers, there is a problem with the proposal's violation of the 27th amendment. There might be a typically Congressional way around that issue using sequestration of pay and arguing that since the money is held in escrow the 27th amendment doesn't apply. That sort of begs the question. Is Congress doing their job playing games like this?
There's the reality that the Senate has a long history of not passing budgets. Life, and spending, goes on without budgets generally through the mechanism of continuing resolutions that roughly say everyone just keep spending like you've been. The simple reality is that lack of a budget doesn't in any way effect spending!
There's the reality that Congress can, and generally does, spend money absent a budget. Really. A budget is just that. It doesn't actually spend any money. Individual spending bills are where the money really gets spent. Here it should be noted, that spending bills need not, and frequently do not, conform to budgets. So the proposal to a significant degree just sets up a political fight without actually dealing with the reality of spending vs income, read taxes.
There's the reality that the debt ceiling has nothing to do with spending. The authorization for spending has already happened and the money has already been spent. The debt ceiling is really about allowing us to pay our bills (after all we are the government). Here, Common Sense supposes, not paying Congress might make some sense excepting that the bill requires Congressional pay be held in escrow so the Congressional pay actually will get spent!
There's the reality that the proposal holds individual members of Congress hostage to the Congressional leadership's idea of what the budget should be. Note here that individual members of Congress while they get to vote on the budget don't actually get to create the budget. Rather the budget is the creation of Congressional leadership and various Congressional committees whose chairpersons and members are appointed by the Congressional leadership. Holding Congress hostage to it's leadership is certainly not democratic.
All things considered, this latest episode of the Congressional Follies is just, sadly, more of the same. Lets go have another political fight that means nothing and does nothing to solve the problem.
Here's an alternate common sense proposal, if the House and Senate can't deal with spending and taxes by the 90 days they want to allow themselves, they are all bared from any future elected or paid role in federal, state, or local government and are bared from being employed by any entity doing business with any government entity. The notion is that they would have to actually have a job like most Americans. We'd still have to put up with the Congressional Follies for another couple of years but perhaps with a different set of employees we might actually get a Congress that is interested in actually dealing with the countries problems and not so much interested in political follies.
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