Citizen Legislators

Another week, another good series of questions for the weekly Christian Views Symposium. Each week Lennie of Cross Blogging asks a question or series of questions. Everyone is then encouraged to answer those questions in the comments or on their own blog: feel free to join in!

This week the questions are about citizen legislatures and career legislatures. I've studied this quite a bit in North Carolina, as Lennie has in IL, as can be seen in his post for this week. His specific questions are:

1. Is there a lack of the working class entering politics today?
2. If there is, what can be done to reverse this trend?
3. Would term limits be an effective method of enticing the working class back into the political arena?

Now Lennie gives the example of legislators in Illinois spending $40,000 in one year to obtain a job that pays $57,000 per year. Lennie, North Carolina only wishes they could have it that good.

In North Carolina, the legislature is, according to the Constitution approved by the people of North Carolina, a part-time legislature. It was designed that way primarily because the people really didn't think the legislature should have all that much to do where they'd need more time.

AND they did it because North Carolina also wanted all people of the state to be able to participate. If the legislature only met for a month or two a year, nearly anyone who wanted to participate could be a citizen legislature.

That was then, this is now.

Most current legislators claim to have another job and career, but very few do. Many are lawyers who take some time away from their job without a problem. A number are retired and have no other active career. Few and far between are the legislators that actually are employed.

And the money is even worse. The pay for these "part-time" jobs is only $13-20,000 (depending on experience and "leadership" positions). The top dogs get close to $40K. The average spent by a winning candidate is $50,000. The big spenders spend well over $100,000.

When I ran in 2000 against an entrenched Democrat, he spent over $300,000 to win his $25,000 a year job. The vast majority of legislators here spend MORE than the job pays. Can you see a problem here? Anyway, on to the questions:

1. Is there a lack of the working class entering politics today?

Absolutely. We're just talking about state-level politics. Add zeros on the end of all those figures when you go to the national congress. How in the world can ANY person hold down a job and manage to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to run a campaign?

I cannot think of a single person who is in an elected position at the state level of higher that has any other job. A large number have degrees in political science and are lawyers. Almost none have any other active career. And yes, that's a very bad thing.

2. If there is, what can be done to reverse this trend?

The only way is to get the reasons for making this your career go away. Pay for politicians will not really have any effect. We've already pointed out that many spend more than the "pay" to obtain the jobs, so they're getting their compensation some other way.

The only real way to reduce this corruption and get rid of career politicians is to reduce government. If government didn't have control over so much money and didn't have the power to influence so much spending and economics, the politicians wouldn't be getting huge kickbacks and "gifts."

3. Would term limits be an effective method of enticing the working class back into the political arena?

No. I think term limits would just expand the arena of career politicians.

I've always been opposed to term limits because I think it limits the rights and abilities of the people to select their leaders. However, the system is now so corrupt and worthless, that I now support term limits as a tiny baby step to moving things back to where they should be.

I don't think term limits will change the way politicians work, but with a larger turnover, perhaps those who stay in a position for 20+ years will no longer have such motivation to spend money and control money for themselves. And if they're only there for 4 years, they'd have a much harder time coordinating such money.

Thanks for asking, Lennie!

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