Sometimes good policy and good politics intersect.  Fixing the problem of ideological extremists shutting down governments with a steady stream of ransom demands is one of those instances.   Any legislator who could figure out a way to reduce the frequency of hugely unpopular shutdowns would further the cause of a more stable democracy, as well as harvest political benefits with three-fourths of voters.

I recently promoted the idea of challenging candidates to pledge to not shutdown government, to effectively increase the political price for shutdowns.  But another way to address the problem it is to increase the personal price for shutdowns.

I therefore propose the Minnesota Legislator Pay Shutdown Act of 2014:

Whereas, reaching consensus and keeping government services operating is the job of the Minnesota legislators;

Whereas, government shutdowns are a clear indication that Minnesota legislators are not doing their jobs;

Therefore, be it resolved that any Minnesota state legislator who supports legislation that results in a government shutdown shall be ineligible to draw their state government salary for a period of one year.

Nobody would ever accuse me of being a legislative draftsman, so this language is obviously illustrative only.  Legislative staffers would need to substitute murky legalese so that virtually no one ultimately could understand it.  But you get the general idea.

Is that fair or just demagogic blogger bluster?  Well, people from surgeons to salespeople have “pay-for-performance” pay models.   So why not legislators?

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.