Which shows that it is about the Political and not the Economic. And those senators have great retirement plans and healthcare, don't they? They made sure to vote that into existence for themselves. You can expect the AARP 'hissy fits' to get louder as senior Americans become the majority. But you're right. On top of all of life's other huge costs that presently have to be paid for by any regular average working young or middle aged, there's the cost of supplementing what should have been in SS for our elders. One day, we'll be in the same fix, and people not even born yet will be loudly decrying that their wages are usurped by all of us older folk, who spent our money during our lives on life's necessities and on chotkas to enjoy our lives with and now find we can't afford $XXXX every month for our meds. It just goes back to the basic fact that there are people/businesses in the health care industry making extraordinary amounts of money off of sick people. The money has to come from somewhere. I'm loathe to tell people that they must cap their profits, like they did in the 80's. But it could come from the savings realized from eliminating bulky government programs and $25,000 toilet seats. It could come from downsizing gov't. and getting rid of politicians who keep their power by bringing in our tax revenues to their constituents for their favored local programs in exchange for votes. Even on a local level here, we don't need all the legislators that have not a thing to do but author new laws dictating that we can't yell "boo" at a softball game, we can't hold a cell phone in a car but we can continue to drive distracted as long as we're not touching the phone. Get rid of one legislator position and you've saved $70,000 salary, plus pension, office and staff, not to mention free up some civil liberties. How many prescriptions would that buy?
This is why I think that every House an d Senate seat should have a term limit like the one that the President now has. Two terms per person and you are out. No more lifetime politician because I truly believe that when someone first gets elected that they honestly feel sincere about making changes but then after they see the gravy train they don't care what is right and the only thing in their minds are to stay in power. Look at the Rebuplicans they took over Congress in the mid 90's and started to cut government but now that they are in power and spending is at an all time high and we are debating yet another entitlement program. I thought they we the party of limited govt? I am seriously thinking of voting Libertarian next election. Eric
As AA stated, its about infrastructure cost as much as anything. Very little of the tax flow gets where its going. Each house office has a budget of about a million. Senate offices are more. Overall the administrative costs are quite high. This is especially true when you magnify it out across all agencies. This considered I guess there is still the argument of buying the peace. This is most likely occurring in Iraq right now as we hand out money to people who sit in jobs which need not exist. Maybe most gov't employees are the real welfare recipients.