Incentive-Based Governing

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We all know why Big Business, Big Non-Profit, Big Labor, and Big Tribalism donate money to federal politicians. They want Congress to pass laws that favor them with some form of cronyism—that is, they want either tax-avoiding loopholes, revenue-enhancing subsidies, or competition-hobbling regulations.

Not all lobbying is bad, of course. If I were a billionaire, for instance, I would be lobbying Congress to create the Junior IRA, end price discrimination in healthcare, and justly compensate those who suffer an equal-protection-of-the-law taking via Affirmative Action. So lobbying can make our federal government less cronyistic, less beholden to the base interests of Big Business, Big Non-Profit, Big Labor, and Big Tribalism.

But like most Americans, I have neither the money nor the intense drive needed to become a major lobbyist in DC. So what to do? How can the crony-hating little guys ever hope to compete against the crony-loving big guys?

The answer, in short, is incentive-based governing. Here’s how it works.

Incentive-Based Governing

To understand incentive-based governing, consider CEO compensation. Boards of S&P 500 companies set shareholder-friendly goals and then reward CEOs handsomely if their CEOs achieve those shareholder-friendly goals. In 2018, for instance, Elon Musk was given ten years to increase Tesla’s market capitalization from $50 billion to $650 billion. He achieved that goal in 2020 and has since been compensated with billions of dollars worth of stock options.

Well, aren’t the 535 members of Congress kind of like the CEOs of America? And wouldn’t it make sense to copy what S&P 500 boards do and create incentives that align the interests of those 535 Congresspeople with the broad interests of the general public?

It makes imminent sense, of course. Here, then, are my citizen-friendly goals, and the rewards our Congresspeople will receive for achieving those goals.

The Carrots

The citizen-friendly goals that I devised come in two tiers and have to do with the general welfare, not the specific welfare of individuals or groups. They’re the kind of goals that any patriot would be delighted to see happen. Tier one goals and rewards are as follows:

And here are the tier two goals and rewards:

Now let’s suppose that all five tier-one goals are met in a given fiscal year. Every member of Congress would get a $5 million bonus, and every member of Congress would get $1 million toward his or her next campaign. The total cost of the tier one compensation package would come to  $3.21 billion.

Now let’s further suppose that all five tier-two goals are met in a given fiscal year. Every member of Congress would get a $10 million bonus ($5 million tier-one bonus plus $5 million tier-two bonus), and every member of Congress would get $2 million toward his or her next campaign ($1 million tier-one campaign contribution plus $1 million tier-two campaign contribution). The total cost of the tier two compensation package would come to $6.42 billion.

The compensation packages for tier-one and tier-two goals are enormous. Three-point-two-one billion and six-point-four-two billion are nothing to sneeze at. But let’s put those costs in perspective. Both are a pittance of the compensation Mr. Musk has been rewarded, and both are a pittance of the military aid we have sent to Ukraine this year. And when we get down to the Congressperson’s level, whether we’re dishing out $6 million rewards or $12 million rewards, both are a pittance of what we gladly pay someone annually to hit a little white ball with a stick or throw a big orange ball through a hoop.

The Sticks

Incentive-based governing wouldn’t work if we just focused on carrots. After all, we’re talking about the modern American politician here—a total sociopath who will happily sacrifice the Constitution and the long-term health of this country in exchange for money and votes. So if incentive-based governing is ever going to work, you need sticks. Here are the sticks I propose:

• If the federal government spends more than it takes in during a given fiscal year, and neither a war nor a national emergency has been declared by Congress, members of Congress will forfeit all rights to any tier-one or tier-two bonuses they earned for that fiscal year. All bonus money will be confiscated and used to pay down the national debt. Members of Congress will just have to be satisfied with their normal congressional pay.
• In addition to forfeiting all bonus money, deficit spending in one fiscal year will trigger old-school austerity for members of Congress and their staffers during the next fiscal year. Members of Congress and their staffers will be barred from the Capitol Building. Instead of the opulent Capital Building and its modern amenities, members of Congress and their staffers will have to use an army-barrack-like campus (think Quonset huts and spartan amenities). This army-barrack-like campus will have the following features:
  • Communal dining run by the Waffle House.
  • Communal sleeping quarters.
  • Communal bathrooms.
  • No air conditioning—only fans and open windows can be used to mitigate the summer heat.
  • No wifi or internet.
  • No computers—only paper and typewriters can be used for communications and bill-writing.
  • No television.
  • No booze.
  • A 9 pm curfew—all Congresspeople and their staffers must be back at our army-barrack-like campus by 9 pm while Congress is in session.
• Finally, if there are four consecutive years of deficit spending, and those four years weren’t complicated by a declared war or national emergency, all members of Congress in that fourth year will be forever barred from holding federal office, working in the federal bureaucracy, or lobbying at the federal or state level. Senators and representatives will be barred from running for re-election, of course, and those senators who aren’t up for re-election will have to resign.

Final Thoughts

It really isn’t hard to out-lobby the lobbyists and turn our sell-out-to-the-highest-bidder politicians into statesmen. But our politicians are too petty, short-sighted, and corrupt to ever propose, much less embrace the incentive-based governing outlined above. And truth be told, we’re just as bad. Check out a sampling of the YouTube uploads of MSNBC and Fox News:

MSNBC

• Folder Marked “Classified” Apparently On Display At Trump 45-Themed Bar
• Rep. Stacey Plaskett: “The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost For Donald Trump”
• Trump Intensifies Violent Rhetoric Amid Reports Of Nuclear Secrets At FL Estate
• Lawrence: Defendant Trump “Has No Reputation To Protect”
• Threats: GOP Shredded Over “Riot” Talk If Trump Is Indicted, After Claims To Condemn Looting In 2020

Fox News

• San Francisco weighs in: How would you grade Gavin Newsom?
• Lauren Boebert: We know how the “Department of Injustice” feels about conservative Americans
• Sarah Huckabee Sanders slams Hillary Clinton’s new “Gutsy” program
• Gov. Noem: Biden’s “hypocrisy” on this is “unbelievable”
• Joe Concha: Biden is using a “disgusting tactic” to stay in power

Have you ever seen anything so pathetic? Are we still in junior high? “Your guy’s a poopy-head.” “No, your guy’s a poopy-head.”

Nope, nothing’s going to change. Our politicians and their stooges in the media know we’re easily distracted—that we will tolerate all the status-quo bullshit that is destroying the country as long as we think “our guys” are going after “their guys.” So if the Republicans take control of the House in November, they will vote to impeach Uncle Joe next year—and Team Red will get to say “Yeah!” And then the Senate will refuse to convict Uncle Joe and Team Blue will get to say “Yeah!” And all the while, Big Business, Big Non-Profit, Big Labor, and Big Tribalism will reap the benefits of buying cronyism, and our vaunted politicians, on both sides of the aisle, will reap the benefits of selling cronyism. Sigh.

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Does incentive-based governing make sense? Or is it just another pie-in-the-sky “solution” dreamed up by a pathetic little blogger in rural North Carolina. Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.