Should government workers get paid to be presidential candidates for 2 years?

by philg

Some folks who get salaries from taxpayers have announced plans to spend the next 1.5-2 years running for President. Examples:

Reviewing the complete list of declared at least reasonably virtuous candidates, there are a bunch more folks who get paid every week for doing a job that they say they aren’t going to concentrate on for the next couple of years.

For a resident of South Bend, Indiana who wants the potholes fixed, how is it fair for that person to pay Mr. Buttigieg through 2020 while he is focused on non-local matters? How does it help us here in Massachusetts to have one of our senators going door-to-door in Iowa? Organizing potlatches in Seattle?

For residents of California, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, is it fair that their Representative or Senator is running around to early primary states instead of advocating for their interests?

Being a Presidential candidate might cause a Rep or Senator to take positions that are adverse to his or her constituents. For example, the Presidential candidate who needs to win Iowa and other farm states would advocate for central planning that raises prices for agricultural products (and/or raises taxes to pay subsidies to farmers). But a Senator from MA or NJ is ostensibly representing urban consumers who are injured by such policies and would be better off in a market economy for food. Example: Elizabeth Warren seems to have changed her tune on whether the Federal government should subsidize agribusiness.

(Americans have minimal representation in Washington even when the folks they pay actually stay at their desks. The House was set up to have one Rep for every 30,000 residents (Wikipedia), but now it is 330 million divided by 435, approximately 1 Rep per 760,000. New Jersey had one senator for every 90,000 residents when the system was set up; today it is one senator for 4.5 million.)

Readers: If a campaign lasts longer than one year should candidates be forced to go on an unpaid leave of absence or resign altogether from any taxpayer-funded job?

7 thoughts on “Should government workers get paid to be presidential candidates for 2 years?”

  1. Most elected officials aren’t workers, really. They have duties, for sure, but they have a tremendous amount of latitude about how they exercise those duties. I guess this is what recall elections are for.

  2. New Jersey had two senators representing the state government when the system was set up. The 17th amendment, ratified in 1913, change the selection of senators to popular vote in the state.

    If I were made king for a day, undoing the 17th amendment is on the short list of things I would like to accomplish.

    • Hear hear! The 17th Amendment has long struck me as perhaps not the *beginning* of the end, but certainly a major step change.

  3. Hi Philip:

    You wrote: “How does it help us here in Massachusetts to have one of our senators going door-to-door in Iowa? Organizing potlatches in Seattle?”

    I would have thought that you and other like-minded Bay Staters would be thrilled to have Elizabeth Warren out of state as much as possible. 😉

    Mark

  4. It’s a pittance compared to the cost of an incumbent president gallivanting to fundraising dinners at the taxpayer’s expense on Air Force One.

    The real solution would be to introduce single-term limits, which would also kill the entire incentive system underpinning corruption.Perhaps extend the term to 6 years like senators to reduce the short-termist thinking effect of too short a tenure, but introduce a recall mechanism as with California governors.

    In the meantime, the rational thing for a voter to do is to systematically vote against the incumbent in primaries and general elections. If even 10-20% of votes adopt this policy, that would yield the same result as a single-term limit law.

  5. I don’t know if anyone has noticed but the Mayor of NYC, “Bill” de Blasio nee “Warren Wilhelm” is running for the Democratic nomination on a platform of wealth redistribution, anti-global warming, and reparations. He’s the worst NYC Mayor in about 25 years and only became Mayor because Anthony Wiener a/k.a “Carlos Danger” couldn’t keep his fly zipped when he was anywhere near an adolescent girl. Wiener finally met his match in one “Sydney Leathers,” who made public his “sexting,” which led to his imprisonment and upon release his registration as a “sex offender.” This poor judgment paved the way for the man formerly known as “Warren Wilhelm” to become Mayor. New York’s newspaper of record, the NY Post has described de Blasio as “lazy” and “a boob.” Now NYC is about the same size as Singapore but one city is bright, gleaming modern metropolis with first rate public officials and infrastructure while the other has been in a state of decay for about 50 years while the public sector unions divide the pie. So i think most New Yorkers are quite happy that their Mayor is off in Nevada or wherever — rather than doing wrecking further havoc in NYC.

    • “He’s the worst NYC Mayor” – you haven’t mentioned anything bad he’s actually done ( or failed to do ), just echoed ad hominem attacks.

Comments are closed.