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No pay for California lawmakers until budget passed
Today, rare political and economic truths have been spoken.
California, as you may have heard, is having some budget problems. Really big budget problems.
Legislators did finally pass a spending bill last week. Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it, said it didn't fix things. Today the state controller agreed -- and using some new powers that he has -- said lawmakers can't get paid 'til they fix it.
The budget, he said, had elements that were miscalculated, miscounted or
unfinished.
Not quite voodoo economics, but still, pretty good.
This is great news! I suggested something like this for the federal level to my elected officials but haven't heard anything back yet. I really think this is an idea who's time is way overdue, especially with all the partisan gridlock in DC.
Docking the pay of legislators for every day the budget is late is one of the more brilliant ideas to come up in recent years, perhaps second only to docking pay for every vote they miss. But, like your story last week said, it's symbolic at best in most cases. What would be far more effective would be to dock the legislators' <em>staffers'</em> pay and require the legislators to pay them out of their own pockets instead.
