Government Money Vs. National Debt

Let's do some number crunching together for a minute. Suppose we were to enable a pay reduction for every member of the Federal and State government wherein this pay reduction is applied IN FULL to the National Debt. Here's how the numbers break down in this hypothetical situation, the reduction per individual amounting to a measly ONE PERCENT of their yearly salary. The following list is by no means a full list, and subject to change when the folks "up top" change their own pay rates, but covers the major positions and how much we could impact the national debt with this very minor reduction in their monetary benefits.

President: Makes $669,000 (including non-taxable travel and expense accounts) / year --$6690--

Vice President: Makes $227,300 / year --$2273--

Former Presidents (x4): $300,000 / year --$12,000--

Former First Ladies (x4): $20,000 / year --$800--

Presidential Cabinet Member(x15): $196,700 / year --$29505--

Subtotal: $51,268

Speaker of the House: $223,500 / year --$2235--

President Pro Tempore: $193,400 / year --$1934--

Senate/House majority/minority leaders(x2): $193,400 / year --$3868--

Asst. Maj/Min Leaders(x2): $162,100 / year --$3242--

Subtotal: $11,279

Chief Justice Supreme Court: $217,400 / year --$2174--

Associate Justice(x8): $208,100 / year --$16648--

Comptroller General: $168,000 / year --$1680--

Deputy Comptroller General: $154,600 / year --$1546--

Librarian of Congress: $168,000 / year --$1680--

Judges - US Court of Appeals (x179): $175,100 --$313,429--

Judges - US District Courts (x677): $165,200 --$1,118,404--

Tax Court Judges (x19): $165,200 --$31,388--

Subtotal: $1,486,949

I live in Colorado, so let's consider only the Senators and members of the House of Representatives for my state.

Senator (x2): $174,000 / year --$3480--

House Representatives (x7): $174,000 / year --$12180--

Subtotal: $15660

Let's say that this ONE PERCENT of their wages was diverted immediately into the national debt.

This would provide a relief of: 1,565,156 dollars.

And that's just for one state, and the tip of the iceburg in relation to the members of government who make far too much yet contribute far too little in ACTUAL improvement of the country, or insurance of it's future.

Let's say that every other state is set up with the same number of districts and senators as North Carolina. This means 98 other senators and 428 house members, so let's add another $915,240 to this. This brings the available national deficit relief up to a staggering:

$2,480,396

Now I realize that the national debt is currently sitting at somewhere around nine TRILLION dollars, but if we trickled this down through every form of government, there would be a psychological effect to accompany this enforced pay cut. Government officials who are responsible for pushing programs which will only end up costing the country money will start becoming more frugal, thus lowering the amount of debt the country is creating. Just like a pay cut for a normal, blue collar worker, those who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year will tighten their expenses, and those who do not will be outed as part of the problem.

Instead of rewarding the government for raising our overall obligation and debt, why don't we penalize them? Let them take a one percent penalty for each and every single year we retain a debt, cumulatively speaking. What I mean is, impose this pay cut in 2012. Come 2013 if we still have a debt, raise the cut to 2%. Then 3%. See how fast things change if they made it up to twenty or thirty percent (by the current number on this page - $46,954,680,) supposing that the penalty was raised 1 percent a month, there'd be anarchy within the federal government alone by the third year of the term of the President.