Jason Chaffetz, R-UT who resigned this week has suggested that housing for the members of Congress is sorely lacking to the point that many of them end up sleeping on cots in their offices. Some buy houses in DC although this leads to charges that they no longer really represent their constituents back home all that well and this has gotten a couple of them unelected. Chaffetz suggests a housing allowance of $2500/mo to get the members a place to live while they're in DC and makes the case that this would probably cost less than 1 airline ticket/week to visit home. It would also make working more than 3 days a week more achievable.
Here's the opportunity: Someone in the high rise construction / real estate biz could build some high rise condos in the DC area, and get a contract to house Senators and congressmen at say $2500/month. This would be included in legislation to require all Senators and Reps to live there while they hold the office.
I would put the 2500 sq ft units on the lower floors for the Reps, the 3500 sq ft units on the upper floors for the Senators, and some 1400 sq ft units in between for indispensable staff and "secretaries". This would probably call for about 1000 total units. To reduce any rancor, the builder would NOT be allowed to put his name on the outside of the buildings in 20 ft tall gold letters.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Fortunes are made with government rental businesses. If you want to work in the Hood, you can rehab houses and rent to Baby Mamas, and pull in $900/mo/house. Houses are cheap to buy in the Hood,and you can have them ready to rent for between $20,000 to $30,000. Fix up 30 to 40 houses and the money rolls in. Renting to a herd of Congress Critters might require adjusting a slum-lord's ethical standards.
And - make the doors lockable from outside! :)
Merle
Or, since this is the 21st century, and the job of Congress is to vote on legislation, make them work from their home districts. There is absolutely no reason for them to congregate in one location, since their votes can be cast electronically from anywhere in the country.
This has several advantages (or disadvantages, depending on your point of view):
- cost reduction
- representatives would be more accessible to their constituents
- lobbyists could not concentrate their resources in one city. Instead, they would have to spread their resources out over 50 states and 435 districts.
- all of our representatives could not be taken out by a single WMD attack; whether by terrorists or an enemy nation-state
For those occasions where members of Congress have to be in Washington D.C., there’s no reason they can’t stay in a military-style barracks or college-style dormitory built for the purpose.
cf, today's "Dilbert" comic strip http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-06-28
True the congressmen could almost as easily work from their home offices using electronic meetings etc, but it's difficult to buy a reluctant colleague another drink over the internet.
and then what would they do about the interns??? :)
Merle
Legislate nationally, boff locally.
They earn $174,000 a year. Their staff can afford housing on much less than that, I think they can manage too.
It's a nice salary, but in all fairness the staff is local to DC while the congressman has to maintain 2 homes, one in DC and one back home.
Post a Comment