Rep. Ralph Norman: Congress hasn’t funded gov't on time in 26 years, time to cut lawmaker pay until balanced budget

Rep. Ralph Norman discusses his new bill, “Congressional Recklessness Act” which reduces all of Congress's pay 1% per-day, while they're in the debating process and don't have a budget in place. The budget each year is supposed to end September 30, with the new budget following on October 1, something Norman says hasn’t happened in 26 years. The South Carolina Congressman says, the United States is "in a situation now, really of no return, this country is in trouble, the budgeting process, the spending, which is outlandish, and 26 consecutive years that we haven't funded government, 1997 is the last time that we went through the appropriations process and actually had a bill, and it's just time to take action on this.” Norman comments, that "having a continuing resolutions through December, which is Christmas holidays, and it just puts a bind on and it's used as leverage for a party to get what they want. But more importantly, it just destroys this country, the leases that have to be made out to for a short period of time, it's insane. So bottom line is, in the private sector, if you don't do the work, you don't get paid and my bill just says you take every day that we go into account, were going to deduct 1% of the salary.” Saying, Congress "make $174,000 a year Senate and House it works out to $476 per day, so if you do the math its right at $5, it's not going to break anybody but it puts some consequences to not doing our job." Norman says that deduction of salary is to prompt Congress to act, "people are tired of words, they want to action, and we want to know how are you going to balance the budget, this 20 year to 25 year, pie in the sky budgets. It's not gonna happen."

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