12-22-2008, 04:35 AM
Doc wrote:
> $160K is not an enormous amount of money
> for someone at the top of our governmental
> bureaucracy.
You seem to think that's all they make and all the compensation they get.
They also get huge sums for every committee and commission that they are on and every title they snag within the structure of the House and Senate.
The home states usually pay for room and board when they're in DC. They don't have to pay for transportation. They don't have to pay for health care. Lobbyists pay for their meals and "fact finding" vacations. They get paid for public speeches. They get paid for appearances on tv.
'Nice "work" if you can get it.
I know about all the extras. Still, you add it all up and its only a fraction of what their cohorts in the private sector make. The average compensation for a CEO in a Fortune 500 company is around 11 million. I'd like to stop the revolving door between Multinational Corps, Wall Street and our legislators. If it means we pay them more and then insist on real ethics reform I think its worth it.
Its easy to use a broad brush to paint them all as crooks and sycophants, and some are, but not all of them. When you enter public life at that level you give up a lot. You have no privacy, any decision you make will be condemned and second guessed, your character will be questioned constantly and the media will latch onto any indiscretion no matter how small and blow it all out of proportion. It seems a wonder that anyone would willingly sign up for that, especially when they see their equivalents in the private sector making a lot more money.
We need to attract the best and brightest into public service. If it helps to pay them commensurately then I'm for it.