I’ve been thinking about it, and I actually think legislators are underpaid. I think they should get a million dollars a year while in office, plus a very generous pension starting when they’re no longer in office, plus full healthcare for life for them and their family. I want them to be extremely well compensated so they can focus on their extremely important work.

The catch is that they must divest themselves from everything when they enter office (fully, they can’t just put it in a trust), and they’re considered a public servant from that point until they die. They can’t go work a “regular” job again, they can’t own a business, they can’t go do consulting after they leave. Any money from book deals or speaking engagements goes to the U.S. Treasury. Any “favors in kind”/“you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” deals are considered to be a form of payment, as is conducting business through a family member or associate. They are allowed to work in governmental positions, to volunteer, or to do other work for the public good but not for any additional compensation.

If they break the rules, they must repay every penny ever paid to them, with interest. This debt can’t be discharged with bankruptcy, and passes to family members upon the death of the legislator if it can be shown that they were aware of the rules being broken and didn’t report it.

50% of the repayment goes to a whistleblower as a reward for their honesty, so there’s an extremely strong incentive for everyone around them to closely watch everything they’re doing to make sure they’re not skirting the rules.

Basically, pay them enough that they have no rational need for corruption, and then an extremely punitive penalty to try to ensure their incentives remain aligned in the correct direction. It certainly wouldn’t solve everything, but I think it’d at least be better than what we have now. And if we capped their wage at the federal minimum, they’d either increase it to a point where they’re getting what they get now (causing severe inflation), only rich people could ever have a hope of being a legislator, or we’d get even more corruption.

Following the noble Texas statehouse tradition of only millionaires with passive income being able to afford holding office.

We should at least pay the median lawyer salary, as these are the law people. The idea that trained professionals should be paid more is not heresy.

I'll take it a step further. They can have the federal minimum wage and all that entails. If the lowest american can live on $7.25 an hour with no other benefits then so can the leaders.

And before someone says it, annual audits on every one of them. If they find a buck on the ground and spend it without reporting, it's jail. They wanna put us in a panopticon, they can join us.

Tell me you only want multi-millionaires being congresspeople without TELLING me you only want rich fucks leading the country.

That will only hurt the ones who aren't corrupt. The corrupted ones get their money through other means.

lol this guy thinking they make most of their money from their salary

Yeah then i can corrupt them with just 2k dollars and it becomes a way worse situation

Yep yep, seems a genius idea

1. "write" a book
2. Have a billionaire backed super PAC buy million copies "to give out to supporters during campaign"
3. profit

They don't need salaries.

I'd settle for taking their state health insurance

how about the median wage? that incentivizes combatting inequality

What does "no pension after 5 years" mean?

some extreme Democratic views you have there, the current admin doesnt really like that. careful you dont get iced