The RP: No Budget? No Pay!

While the RP has recently been stirring the pot with pieces on highly controversial issues such as legalizing marijuana, expanded gaming, and Tim Tebow, he now addresses an idea that should have nearly-universal support: Cutting Congressional pay when they fail to pass a budget.  Read this except from his piece today in The Huffington Post:

A thousand days.

In our gazelle-paced, über-networked society, so many remarkable, epochal events have taken place during the last thousand days:

Both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street emerged as powerful rebuttals to the status quo in American politics…

The Arab Spring ushered in a domino effect that toppled vicious dictators across the Middle East…

A handful of European democracies teetered on the brink of collapse, while world powers rushed to preserve the global economy…

And most significant of all…Two Kardahsian weddings were followed by one Kardashian divorce.

But one critical thing has not occured:

It’s been more than one thousand days since the U.S. Congress passed a budget resolution.

And in the meantime, the congressional appropriations process – the means by which all federal spending is authorized and allocated – has simply broken down.  During the current fiscal year, only 3 of the 12 regular appropriations bills have been passed.

Sound like a lot of inside the Beltway jargon?

Here’s what it means:

When Congress acts without a budget, it essentially is spending taxpayer money without first evaluating and prioritizing its services. A budget, in essence, is a blueprint that allows us as a nation to make deliberate decisions on how to allocate our scarce resources.  Without one, taxpayers are forced to pick up the tab for the waste and inefficiencies.

When Congress fails to pass spending bills on time, it relies instead on temporary spending measures.  In the past fiscal year, there were eight such temporary “continuing resolutions.”  This start-and-stop spending process causes havoc for federal agencies that provide for our national defense, transportation financing, education support, environmental protection, and product and food safety. Government is forced to operate in a fog of financial uncertainty, resulting sometimes in delays of critical national services.

But guess who’s been paid right on time, like a Swiss clock, during this entire thousand day period?

No need for a spoiler alert: It’s just too delicious an irony…the U.S. Congress.

Click here to read the entire piece, “No Budget? No Pay!” at The Huffington Post.