What if Congress had incentives?
Lets travel back in time to Feb 2009. A new President, rich in hope and promise, moved to deal with economic crisis.
He sent a bill with two pages to the Congress. The first page was blank. The second had just one paragraph:
Put your plan on the first page. If it reduces the unemployment rate to 6% in the 1st year, and is deficit neutral over its entire life, each member of Congress will receive $1,000,000.
Might have 2009 been different?
Don’t like bribing Congress to do the right thing? You could flip it and punish them with 100% taxation on their reelection funds and income.
We need to do something to get that rat bastard crew in Washington to look out for all of us, not just themselves or their SEIU donors.
If you don’t like this idea, I’m all ears for your great scheme, as long as it doesn’t involve saying crapola like “our current system is working” or “you are free to vote out your Congressman”.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Good spirit of innovation and mission, and your plan certainly would have incentives: to re-define “unemployment”, to re-define “deficit neutrality”, and to pass laws that would not pass Constitutional muster. You’ll have to keep remembering that government is not a business. It’s not healthy to have the national rule-makers directly and personally benefiting from the rules.
March 9th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I’m sure they would cheat.
They need to be replaced.
March 9th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
The U. S. has mostly operated under the “functional” understanding of the “rule of law” with each branch exercising some discretion but never stepping as far out of bounds as the power obsessed, America hating, President now in office. The Constitution is just an old piece of useless paper to him and his band of corrupt, Chicago political thugs. His version of “law” is whatever suits his ego, or “rule of the rhetorical superman.”
March 9th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
We are lucky the military and police are mostly conservative.