Wednesday, April 26, 2017

A Modest Proposal

In Illinois everything is taxed, licensed, fee-ed, etc.... That is except legislators.  This should change.  Here is my proposal.

$1,000 fee on every bill or resolution introduced.
$500 fee on every amendment added.
$100 fee on every sponsor.
$50 fee on every co-sponsor.

An argument I heard in favor of state licensing for firearm dealers is that hairdressers, construction workers, pretty much every other profession, is licensed.

So why shouldn't legislators?

They should have testing in Federal and State Constitutional issues, public safety, education, and every topic they propose legislation on.  Each additional topic can be added as an endorsement and the legislator can then propose legislation on that topic.

Of course fees would be required to obtain the license and endorsements.

Revenue generated from these fees will be used for schools in the legislator's district.

Obviously any politician who would oppose this proposal is against the education of children.


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2 comments:

BC said...

Change a couple words:

"Introduced" to "proposed"
"added" to "proposed"

Then add a zero to all your prices

Archer said...

A fine proposal, but if I may offer one suggestion:

A $500 credit for any bill introduced that would repeal an existing law, statute, or regulation. This should only apply to bills for full repeal of an entire existing law or statute -- not repeal-and-replace, and not "amend a law to remove a sub-section", and not "amend to remove language from a bill"; amendments that would add language or create new laws are subject to the same fee as if it were on a non-repeal bill.

I'm thinking the credit should be half the "new law" fee so that to break even legislators have to repeal two for every new one (we can apply this to the sponsor and co-sponsor fees as well; supporting repeals earns credit at half value). It should also not be possible to do any better than breaking even; legislators should not be allowed to introduce a pile of insincere repeals designed to fail, just to milk the system for extra cash. The best-case scenario should be that at the end of the session, they owe nothing.