Howard: Citizen legislators viable solution for governmental inefficiency

Writing about warrantless wiretaps last week, I concluded that the federal government holds… Writing about warrantless wiretaps last week, I concluded that the federal government holds too much sway over the lives of individual Americans and that its intrusiveness can only be diminished through non-traditional solutions which limit the power of both government officials and political parties.

Indeed, we have passed the point where a package of laws, a change in power or a court decision are capable of doing anything more significant than blunting the government’s will to power. Thus, finding a solution capable of permanently rolling back the size and power of government is the pressing cause of our modern Republic.

Last week, I suggested that the answer might be a part-time federal legislature. Through this plan, the Congress would — like Texas’ legislature — meet for only 140 days every two years to set a biennial budget and then meet in a special session if a crisis arose.

The value of the part-time legislature is that it requires legislators to work and live as citizens under the laws they pass. In theory, it eliminates the insulation of career politicians at the same time it lowers costs.

Currently, the creation of part-time legislatures is the subject of state-level activism where supporters of limited government seek to replace full-time state legislatures with part-time ones in an attempt to lower costs and eliminate corruption. This movement is gaining speed in Pennsylvania where the high cost of the state legislature — $300 million annually — and the frequency of corruption trials provide ample reason for a move to part-time status.

Writing for the Commonwealth Foundation — a Pennsylvania think tank based in Harrisburg — Nathan Benefield said, “There is convincing evidence that restoring the General Assembly to part-time citizen legislature would result in lower taxes, more efficient government and less corruption.”

But more important than creating part-time legislatures at the state and federal level is the need to create citizen legislatures. Admittedly, changing legislatures from full-time to part-time would go a long way toward accomplishing this, but it wouldn’t necessarily solve the entire problem.

First, I should explain that a citizen legislature is one where the legislators are citizens with unrelated full-time jobs rather than professional, career politicians who live off their legislative salary. In many ways, it is possible to identify a citizen legislature by examining the annual salary of a rank-and-file legislator in any given state.

For instance, Pennsylvania’s legislature is considered a professional one because a rank-and-file legislator in the Pennsylvania General Assembly receives a salary of $78,314 per year. Members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly generally hold no job except for their elected one.

In contrast, New Hampshire is considered to have a citizen legislature because their legislators receive a salary of only $200 per two-year term with no per diem, according to data from 2008. Similarly, New Mexico pays its legislators nothing; Alabama pays its legislators only $10 per day and a handful of states pay their legislators less than $15,000 a year.

By paying legislators far less than they need to live on, citizen legislatures cultivate a membership that is truly dedicated to public service rather than monetary gain. Furthermore, the miniscule pay of citizen legislatures requires that legislators hold full-time jobs in the state in which they legislate, thus forcing them to work under the laws and regulations they enact.

Examining the salaries of federal legislators, it is clear that members of Congress occupy a position more similar to that of Pennsylvania legislators than their New Hampshire counterparts. Specifically, the base pay of a member of Congress in 2010 is $174,000, a rate of pay that makes sitting in Congress a full-time job.

By way of further contrast, members of Congress in the early decades of the Republic received no fixed salary and only a $6 per diem for each day the Congress was in session.

With $174,000 a year plus benefits, senators and representatives don’t work outside the Capitol. They don’t work under the regulations they enact and they certainly don’t run a small business impacted by Obamacare.

So while making federal and state legislatures part-time bodies would constitute a step in the right direction, it’s important to recognize that the ultimate goal is the creation of citizen legislatures. Such legislatures rest on their members being successful members of the private sector rather than career politicians who live off taxpayer dollars.

This can best be accomplished by returning legislative compensation to its early republican roots when legislators were compensated for their expenses and little more. After all, the citizen legislatures of the Revolutionary Era produced the brightest and best statesmen in this nation’s history. The Founders’ collective talent and intellect has yet to be matched by the current professional legislatures and their political career-oriented members.

Continue the conversation at Giles’s blog, gilesbhoward.com/blog/, or e-mail Giles at gbh4@pitt.edu.