modest proposal
Sep. 1st, 2011 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quislibetRepresentative Eric Cantor (R-VA) made headlines the other day when, in the wake of Hurricane Irene, he said that FEMA budget shortfall could be made up only by slashing the money from something else. For the Republicans, every crisis is an opportunity to shrink the government further. Take, for example, the current economic woes our country faces: the Republican answer to widespread unemployment is to add to it by firing as many public employees as possible.
We can work with that.
Listen: operating Congress is expensive. Now, here in Rhode Island, we have a little over a million people and two Representatives. InWyoming Montana, they have one representative for just under a million people. We Rhode Islanders can only admire that efficiency. If we made all of the House of Representatives run on the Montana model – one representative for every million people or so, rounding up or down to the nearest million (usually down; we're trying to save money here), we could cut, for example, three representatives from the Honorable Mr. Cantor's home state, seven from Texas, as many as sixteen from California, and so on, totaling a grand layoff of 120 members of Congress.
My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest this would save American taxpayers about $300 million a year in salaries, benefits, office costs, and staffer pay – and that's before other savings like lower electricity, the reduced need for security, and so on.
Now, $300 million isn't a lot compared to the size of the deficit, but it's a good round number for a lot of programs conservatives complain about, like the recently imperiled Economic Development Administration, which sends grants to economically devastated communities of the sort that, we are given to understand, Obama has been creating on a daily basis. It could instead cover, for example, the annual budget for anti-terror transit security, if that seemed important.
Would this be less democratic? Probably. Or would a reduced Congress be more efficient? Who knows? Doesn't matter. We're not talking about what's good for our country; we're just talking about slashing the budget. Let's not lose track of what's important here.
We can work with that.
Listen: operating Congress is expensive. Now, here in Rhode Island, we have a little over a million people and two Representatives. In
My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest this would save American taxpayers about $300 million a year in salaries, benefits, office costs, and staffer pay – and that's before other savings like lower electricity, the reduced need for security, and so on.
Now, $300 million isn't a lot compared to the size of the deficit, but it's a good round number for a lot of programs conservatives complain about, like the recently imperiled Economic Development Administration, which sends grants to economically devastated communities of the sort that, we are given to understand, Obama has been creating on a daily basis. It could instead cover, for example, the annual budget for anti-terror transit security, if that seemed important.
Would this be less democratic? Probably. Or would a reduced Congress be more efficient? Who knows? Doesn't matter. We're not talking about what's good for our country; we're just talking about slashing the budget. Let's not lose track of what's important here.
