Nut Keeling Proposes $60,000/year For Part-Time Job
In a recent editorial, Larry Dale Keeling proposes changing the way we pay our legislators in Frankfort. He is in full form with his typically-backwards liberal reasoning.
His begins the discussion quoting Senate President David Williams who explains how some legislators abuse the system:
"The guidelines say you get paid a per diem on your travel days," Williams said. "Let's say there's an opening reception on a Tuesday. They'll want to travel in on Monday and get paid for the day before the conference starts and then go to a reception the next day."
Williams, Keeling and we all recognize that such activity is an abuse of the system. Where Keeling veers off into the fantasyland in which he typically resides is his proposed solution to legislators abusing the system: a massive pay increase so that legislators would no longer have incentive to abuse the system:
Since salaried legislators wouldn't be able to pad their pay by adding extra days to official trips, they might shorten their trips (and reduce the attendant cost of lodging and food) in the future.
This is akin to President Obama's proposal to spend $900 billion more dollars to "fix" the least-efficient health care system in the world.
We'll pay the cheaters more to encourage them not to cheat? How about just saying "No!" to the abuse? Same result--less costly to the taxpayers.
Next Keeling proposes this:
We need to pay legislators a salary commensurate with the demands we place on them. I would start that conversation at $60,000 a year, minimum, with a reasonable built-in cost-of-living increase.
$60,000 a year for a job that consumes 60 days a year plus maybe two days a month for eight months? $60,000 over four and a half months of work is equivalent to $160,000 annualized. For the record, that's four times Kentucky's median household income.
Besides, legislators are already eligible for an incredibly abusive retirement pension.
And, as Senator Worley demonstrated, there are plenty of perks to the job.
Later, he makes a fair point about the unjustness of allowing the same expense compensation regardless of the distance a legislator must travel to Frankfort. But mostly, he leaves us wondering as always: does he actually think about the things he publishes?
