The Vision Thing

According to a new Democracy Corps poll the following idea is very popular:

Requiring Congress to forego a pay raise in any year the government runs a deficit or raids the Social Security trust fund, and requiring that any future benefit cuts to Social Security should apply to congressional pensions as well.

42 percent say they would be "much more likely" to support a candidate proposing those things, and 23 percent say they would be "more likely." Sadly, it's a pretty bad idea. Top salaries for civil servants are linked to congressional pay. The result is that when the government needs to hire skilled professionals (lawyers, say, or scientists) they already can't afford to pay anything close to what top practitioners can earn in the private sector. But these government jobs are important, and it's important that they be done well. But, whatever, if you actually had to implement this into legislation you could combine it with something to change the federal employee salary linkage and there'd be no problem. I think it's doubtful that requiring Congress to forego pay raises anytime there's an on-budget deficit would actually accomplish anything deficit-wise, but if that's the sort of wacky populism the people demand then it might be worth offering.