I received this in an email credited to Warren Buffet. It may just be an internet spam but it does pose an interesting idea.

What do you think?

*Congressional Reform Act of 2011*
1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no
pay when they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.

Sounds too good to be true! Probably just spam, especially if it was coupled with the offer, "Do you want to make this dream a reality all while increasing your penis size?"

Ha Ha. No, nothing like that, but it did say "send this to twenty of your friends".

There was a "lead-in" to the email which said:


Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:
"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

its an idea, but who do you think would suffer the most from it?

I dont think the best decisions are always made when people feel under threat or obligation,,,especially those concerning americans...

Congress is better at looking after their own interest than looking after the interest of America. An incentive to keep their job by doing what they are supposed to do really doesn't seem to have a down side.

Congress hates America, but looooooooves business and their money!

But what difference would keeping a job be if the job had a set time period in the first place? that would be like an experiment,, ending the same way regardless of the job done,,,

It's in the constitution. It's the way it was meant to work.

Being elected to office is not a JOB...

It is a service rendered the community.

and should be an honor, not a right.

It is a job if it is involved enough that one could not reasonably be expected to 'divide' their efforts with some other income source,,,

military is also an honor, doesnt mean its not also a job

I think we first we have to completely criminalize a variety of ways that congresspeople sell their influence.





3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.


Sounds good to me!



Voting themselves a pay raise is whack - we definitely need a better system.

Pegging it to the lower of CPI or 3% doesn't make sense, and somehow I doubt that Buffet would propose something like that. Legislation like this should be designed to be sensible for decades; I don't think we adequately predict what will happen to the value of the dollar for so long.



Sounds good.



Do they mean - including their employment contracts? This seems extremist, and I'd wager Buffet didn't say that. There are better ways to transition to a less broken system.

I think the congressional pension plan should be attacked LOOOOOOONG before SS or Vet benefits!

There's more money in it anyway!

I assumed the original email on which this thread is based was at least partially spam, so I looked up what their pensions actually were.

Under a law enacted in 1983, all members of Congress both contribute to and receive benefits from the Social Security system. Upon retirement, members receive either a combination of federal pension and Social Security benefits or Social Security alone, depending upon when their term of service started and how they configured their individual plan.

Members elected after 1983 pay into the Federal Employees Retirement System. Members elected before 1983 participate in the older Civil Service Retirement Program. In both cases, members of Congress contribute to the plans at a slightly higher rate than ordinary federal employees.

As of 2002 (updated figures here), 411 retired members were receiving benefits under CSRS at an average rate of $55,788 per year and 71 were receiving benefits under FERS (or a combination of CSRS and FERS) with $41,856 per year in average benefits. Members do not automatically received lifetime pensions. How much they receive and how long they receive it depends on many factors, including age, length of service (including military) and choice of plans, etc. So, while it's conceivable that a few may receive pay-outs totalling more than a million dollars by the time they die, they would be the exception, not the rule.

...

The 10 Wealthiest Members of Congress

If you stayed up nights wondering whether members of Congress would be able to weather the Great Recession of the late 2000s, this bit of news should finally put your mind at ease.

Overall, members of Congress saw their personal wealth grow by more than 16 percent during the worst economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression, according to financial disclosures submitted by lawmakers.

See more: Even in Recession, Congress Pay Grew

The median personal wealth for members of Congress grew to $911,510 in 2009, up from $785,515 in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Nearly half of the members of Congress are millionaires.

From

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/ss/Wealthiest-Members-of-Congress.htm

I completely agree with all of this, by paying Congress a sizable salary they have all become career politicians.

In america, for good or bad, wealth is much less about how hard you work but who you know ,, ie networking

politicians have a job that provides the best of all possible networks,, so it stands they would be wealthy,,,

It stands that they would be wealthy from taking money from special interests intent on buying votes.

I dont think its legal to take money for personal income in exchange for a vote

but it is legal to make investments , purchase stocks and bonds, sell books, get paid to speak,,, and a number of other income resources that people who are in a NETWORK of experts in those areas tend to have more access to

You mean like having the Department of State buy 70,000 dollars worth of you books...

so the book can stay on the 'best seller' list.