Congressional Pay for Performance: No Budget, No Pay

Romina BocciaImagine you are an executive at a major corporation. One of the core responsibilities of your job is to collaborate with the other executives to adopt budget and organizational policies for your corporation each year. Instead of meeting your responsibilities, most years the corporation is forced to operate without a budget as outdated policies continue and the firm bleeds red ink. Such a dysfunctional corporation likely wouldn ’t last very long. You and the other executives would also likely face pay cuts, before eventually getting fired.Now, imagine this same scenario, but you ’re a member of Congress and the budget you ’re supposed to pass is for one of the largest organizations on the globe: the U.S. federal government.Congress misses deadlines regularly and often fails to complete its work. Congress rarely passes an annual budget nor do members manage to write all 12 annual spending bills before they ’re due. The consequences are a less effective, more expensive government that wastes taxpayer dollars and burdens current and future generations with massive debt.Incentive pay is one key mechanism for aligning individual workers ’ motivations with the goals of their employers in private firms. Perhaps it’s time we pay members of Congress for performance.In the private sector, incentives are well ‐​aligned with executives and managers being rewarded for generating profits. And workers, for the most part, receive pay comme...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs