My take on fixing Washington...

It's so mindbogglingly simple. But I'll start from the beginning of my reasoning here. I'll take you on my train of thought (usually has a lot of detours and back tracking, but not this time)!

I've joked for years and years that the only thing politicians in Washington can agree on is that they need a raise. They fight over everything else and I'm amazed that any actual legislating of any sort happens. It's a sad joke really, not intended to be ha ha funny, but rather, that's so pathetic you have to laugh. I don't think politicians should be paid much more than us. They're supposed to be in the business of public service, not the business of amassing fortunes.

I've always felt that if they think they should get a raise, they should have to ask us. They claim they work for us right? So, shouldn't we be the ones to judge their job performance? I don't get to tell my boss, oh hey, by the way-I was really busy the last few months, so I told payroll to give me a 20% raise. I dare you to try it and see if you get to keep your job.

A friend asked me how I'd qualify good job performance for Washington. Very simply...no gridlock. Debate yes, compromise-absolutely! But no digging in of the heels-I won't listen to any of your ideas b/c you're from the other side of the isle bull honky. That's a bunch of stupid crap and we're all sick of it!

So I say the best start to cleaning up Washington is this. Across the board pay cut. I'm talking like a 10% pay cut too. Maybe more. Then, at every election we'd see the following at the end of our ballot: "Does the house and senate job performance merit a wage increase?" Yes or No. "Does the house and senate job performance merit a wage decrease?" Yes or No. I have a feeling that (truly) being accountable to their constituents would start a lot more collaboration in congress.

So now you'll probably get to thinking, well if the greedy bastards aren't getting their money from us, won't they just get it from the lobbyists? Fair question. I don't know, maybe each and every congressperson should have an IRS agent assigned specifically to them, so every single thing they do is monitored. I don't have all the answers. But I think I'm on to something here.