The First Hundred Days of the Obama Administration

[Tom]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

I am going to a Blazer game tomorrow night....20,000 fans plus hundreds of employees will all be inside one building.

How many office's are there in the Pentagon?

With that many congresspersons, each one could concentrate on just one committee and wouldn't need a staff. As for their pay.....we don't need professional legislators; each one should be paid a stipend to cover basic living expenses while away from home and nothing more. No pensions, no 6 figure salaries, etc. Think of it as a sort of voluntary jury duty.

To the first part: Sure you can put 20,000 people in a building when all they have to do is sit there and not move. Once each of them has to have a desk, and an office, and staff... it adds up really quickly.

24,000 people work in the Pentagon. I'm not sure how many have their own office. But also consider: what's the annual budget of the Pentagon? Do you want to add that much to the federal government's budget?

And sure you can spread out congresspeople more when you have that many, but I don't buy that they could away without staffs. I doubt that one person could even read all of the legislation that gets considered, leaving no time to write any, or research any, or do anything else one might expect of members of congress (like listening to their constituents). And maybe you like the idea of non-professional legislators, but I think they're a disaster. The job is too big to do part-time, and won't be smaller with more legislators. There will still be just as many bills to vote on - actually a lot more, I'd wager, as you'd have a lot more legislators trying to make their mark.

Having said all that, if we, the American people, believe that increasing the size of Congress is in our interests, we should do it. But we should be aware of the costs.