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The Annoyed Man wrote:
"I'm OK with paying congress critters in the $150K-$200K range. I just don't want it to be their career. Guys like Joe Biden, for instance, have never really held down an honest job before... and he's the reason I pray daily for Obama's good health."

If you pay them that kind of salary, it will be their career. We only began having Congresses full of career politicians when we began paying them a good salary. You can't have one without the other.

The Annoyed Man wrote:
"The trouble with that is that you then having only those who can afford not to work serving in congress.... ....namely, only rich people, or people on welfare."

We have no poor people in Congress and never have had any poor people or even any middle income. However before we paid salaries to politicians at all levels, generally members of Congress had done something in real life before coming to Congress and had some idea how the real world works. That pretty much stopped when we started paying politicians salaries.

This thread isn't about reality. None of these ideas are ever going to come close to passing.

The best thing we could do to fix campaign finance laws is to get rid of all the current ones and require candidates to post the identity of all contributors and the amount of all contributions on the web within 5 days of any contribution. That way at least we would know who was buying who and could vote accordingly.

I have a much simpler solution although just as unlikely to ever get passed. Let's quit paying them salaries or perks. Most of our problems began when we began paying Congress a full time salary and perks.