If I were in office...

                If you have read some of my previous blog posts, you are aware that I am pretty serious about politics, so much so that I think of solutions for problems that our politicians face every year.  You could say that this blog serves as my platform and this entry would act as my plans for reform in the future.  Figuring out solutions that have an effect on all Americans is quite the intimidating task.  It always comes down to the thought process of “this policy will help more people than it will harm.”  In my opinion, that is why the federal government is so inefficient.  Every state has different needs.  Whether it be the population as a whole is older or younger or the per capita income level for the state is higher or lower.  The federal government should provide the state’s with the means to govern properly.  The states know what they need, if you let the state governments become self sustaining and allow them to think of themselves as an efficient business then in time they’ll start acting like one.  If we could pull that off then the national deficit and/or the burden that the federal government has to dedicate funds to state projects would cease to exist.

                More importantly though, there are other issues facing the nation currently and as the title suggests I’d like to propose my solutions for them.   If I were in office…

·         Lobbyist Reform:  Lobbyists and special interest groups have far too much control of our government.  They can push a bill through by paying for the votes and the bill will be around for decades.  This is not right, and Americans are becoming more and more fed up with this type of behavior.  My solution is no more lobbying.  That was simple, right?  Allow me to elaborate.  Obviously lobbyists are going to continue to lobby, if congressmen will accept briefcases of money then lobbyist will continue to work.  What I’m talking about is no more closed door lobbying, if you are a lobbyist and you need votes then stand up in the house and plead your case.  Tell everyone how much you are willing to pay for a vote, let us know how important it is for you and your company.  Then if a politician is in need of cash and accepts the payment, then this needs to become public information.  Town hall lobbying if you may.  Not only will this reduce the skepticism the American people have with our system of government, but come election time it will be a lot easier to decipher through the candidates policies and cut through the bullshit we’ve all become so accustomed to year after year. 

·         Salary Reform: We’ve all learned that politicians generally have control over how much they make every year.  I would love a job that allows me to annually give myself a raise even if I haven’t done anything.  That would be the life!  Sometimes people say that back when this country was formed, being a politician wasn’t your only profession.  This is true, and I subscribe to this school of thought, but in reality being a politician is a full time job anymore.  It’s a full time job and you should get compensated properly, but there is a little to much excess as of recently.  My solution is that the amount of money that you make will be equal to the median per capita income for the state’s citizens.  No more and no less.  In business the idea is to create value, to make something more profitable then it was when you started.  Is it so wrong to tie the compensation of a politician to the overall increase or decrease of his/her constituent’s wealth?  Then at least you could make the argument that your politician has your best interest in mind because if his pay goes up that means that the state’s citizens income went up.  I think that is fair.

·         Education Reform: Every school is different, so it’s impossible to make one piece of legislation and say that this will fix the system, because it won’t.  What we can do is make an attempt to incentivize the system for teachers.  This is when it gets difficult, because if you were to standardize the pay grade for the grades the students are getting then you would have to standardize the material and exams for every school.  I don’t think that’s a good fit, you don’t want to make it a numbers game for teachers.  The truth of the matter is there is no perfect solution, if you’re a teacher then teach!  Do your job, it’s what you get paid to do, to educate our children.  I do believe that their needs to be a yearly review, a tenured teacher that is bitter and has given up on all children shouldn’t be molding the minds of 10 year old kids.  Get rid of these teachers, the only reason for tenure is so that you don’t feel like you will get fired.  If you have been teaching for more then ten years and you still think you’re going to get fired, then you must not be very confident with your teaching abilities.  School districts that could implement a type of objective review would get rewarded in the form of abolishing the federal income tax that the teachers pay.  That’s killing two birds with one stone right there.  One, this would allow school districts to better manage their workforce and create an environment for great teachers to continue teaching and for bad teachers to change careers.  Secondly, by getting rid of the federal income tax for teachers you are increasing their after tax salary.  It’s a win win win, for the districts, the teachers, and the students. 

·         Administration Dynamic:  President Obama is a very smart man.  Nobody can take that away from him.  As much as this is a great thing, I think it hurts the way his administration works.  His entire staff just sits around him with their copy of the audacity of hope and listens to him lecture on his future policies.  That’s not how an administration should get things done.  If I were in his position I would have people from both sides of the aisle working on solutions for real life problems facing the country.  People don’t give a shit who came up with the policy, they care about the result and how it affects them.  By having people from different viewpoints working on solutions, guaranteed you will have more efficient policies.  As a politician your job is to govern or to manage.  Manage your staff in an effective manner that allows the creation of new, innovative, cost efficient policies and you will benefit the nation.  That’s why you get involved in politics, to make things better than they were before you were in office.

·         Bank Reform: As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, the mortgage market is a problem.  In 2008 we all experienced the volatility of this area of the market.  The problem is banks can give out mortgages all day to people and then dump them off to other institutions that package them up and sell them to Wall Street.  I have absolutely no problem with how Wall Street handles the MBS market.  My problem is that banks can dump mortgages off their books.  This needs to change and if it doesn’t, in another twenty years we will experience the same financial meltdown as we did a few years ago.  Bottom line the banks need to keep loans on their books, will this stifle lending? Absolutely, and that is not a bad thing for the most part.  Forcing people to live within their means isn’t the government’s job, but it is the government’s job to provide a path for people to live conservatively and not fall into the trap of debt.  I’m all for a free market system but the financial industry needs a change.  We can’t afford another generation of Americans to live outside of their means or we will be having this same debate in another twenty years. 

·         Social Security: I think it’s pretty widely known at this point that social security is a problem that needs to be addressed.  Back in the day, twenty workers paid into social security for every one person collecting benefits.  In a few years, three workers will pay into social security for the benefits of one person.  You don’t need to be a genius to realize that this isn’t going to work much longer.  The baby boomer generation is going to be the killer to this system.  It’s not their fault, it’s just how it’s going to work out.  I think that by 2020 we should abolish social security completely and whatever is left in the account will be distributed to the American people in a lump sum amount adjusted for a person’s age.  That means a forty year old that would like to retire at age sixty has 20 years to accumulate enough money to retire, that’s a long time horizon for investing.  Anything shorter than 2020 wouldn’t be fair to people who have figured social security benefits into their retirement plan, so they can collect up to 2020 and then tap into their retirement savings.  It might not be the best policy, but the ball needs to start rolling on some type of reform or we are going to have a serious problem in the future.

I’m not suggesting that the above policies are the best way to solve the problems facing our nation, but I am suggesting that as a citizen it is your duty to consider possible solutions for these problems.  If you do this then you can go to your politician and say “listen this is what I think.”  Instead of saying “I don’t want to pay any taxes, now fix that!”  As a collective society we are smart enough to solve these problems.  The biggest misconception of being a politician is that you need to be the smartest guy in the room.  I’m sorry but I just don’t think that is true, you need to be the best manager in the room.  You don’t need to come from a big law firm or an Ivy League school.  You just need to put together an unbiased staff, and solve problems objectively.   The United States government is a huge corporation, and it’s time that it starts operating like one.