Caution: My opinion on what is wrong with government.

US President and Congress Salaries

President of the United States makes $400,000 per year (1) $400,000

Vice President makes $230,700 (1) $230,770

US Senators make $174,000 per year (98) $17,052,000

Majority and Minority Leaders make $193,400 (2) $386,8000

House of Representatives make $174,000 per year (434) $75,516,000

Speaker of the house makes $223,500 per year (1) $223,500

Total Expense for the President, Vice President and all of Congress $93,413,070

The 2016 US budget $16,500,000,000,000

Percentage of the US budget spent on them .00056%

This might seem like a lot of money to middle class America, but when you look at it, these salaries are what keep Washington an extremely wealthy elitist group. These current salaries that I’m going to call low for what is expected in the job is why our government is so corrupt. They need special interest money to pay bills or be so extremely wealthy they couldn’t begin to understand real people problems.

Stay with me on this one. Multiply the salary of all by 4X and remove all special interest $. Make the salaries match the type of people you want running the country or a successful business.

·     -  No member of Congress or president will be able to accept donations from companies or super packs.

·     -  All individual donations must be made public (Name, employer, and occupation). Donations cannot exceed $10,000 from any individual for the election.

·     -  Set term limits to 3 terms for the Senate and 8 terms for the house. This will keep bringing in new people with fresh ideas.

·     -  Once elected, must no longer receive payment or gifts for speaking engagements, appearances, or anything else that could be a form of financial influence. They are paid to do a job that they need to do.

·      - All registered voters can vote for anybody in the primary election regardless of party affiliation

·      - Top 4 presidential nominees after the primaries will receive 5,000,000 to run an election no matter party affiliation. The rest will come from individual donations. (In 2012 Obama spent 638,000,000 and Romney spent 408,000,000.)

Many more things would need to be worked out but I think this would be a good start. These changes would pay the politicians very good money for representing us. It would stop them from representing the companies, and large donors and put the control back in the hands of the people. You would also get a new interest in politics from people that once seen it as too corrupt for them to be a part of.

Salaries under my plan

President of the United States makes $1,600,000 per year (1) $1,600,000

Vice President makes $923,080 (1) $923,080

US Senators make $696,000 per year (98) $68,208,000

Majority and Minority Leaders make $773,600 (2) $1,547,320

House of Representatives make $696,000 per year (434) $302,064,000

Speaker of the house makes $894,000 per year (1) $894,000

Total Expense for the President, Vice President and all of Congress $373,652,280

+ campaign funds for President election 20 Million /4 years $5,000,000

Total with Presidential Campaign funds $378,652,280

The 2016 US budget $16,500,000,000,000

Percentage of the US budget spent under new salaries .00229%

Being such a small part of our budget this would make next to no impact on our financial budget but would bring great change to a government that could once again be known as the “Government of the people, by the people, for the People”.