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Comment by stetrain | Hacker News Reader

The idea is that if their salary does not actually cover the expenses of living in and traveling to DC to do their job, you are limiting the pool of potential congressional representatives to those who are independently wealthy or who are finding other ways to make money via their position.

Paying enough to cover the expenses of the job isn't a solution to all problems, just kind of a minimum bar if we want a normal person to be able do the job without relying on other income sources.

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At first I am sympathetic to this idea, but the act of running is so expensive and time consuming, it does not matter what the salary will be, the pool is already limited.

You need to be well connected and/or wealthy before you even start.

That's true, and I think Bernie's idea of having publicly funded elections is great because of that issue.

Or don’t have elections and pick legislators randomly like we pick juries.

I think sortition is a great idea but you would probably need a constitutional amendment if you wanted sortition in Congress or the Senate. I think the State's have some discretion over how elections are run but I don't think its enough discretion to allow appointment by RNG. I think the strongest argument you could make is its an election where everyone is forced to vote for themselves and tie-breaks are chosen by RNG but I don't think that would be valid because I assume the courts would demand electors execute some agency.

The text of the constitution for electing congress says:

> The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States

and there is something similar for the Senate after the 17th amendment. I think pre-17th amendment States may have been able to use Sortion to appoint Senators but it would not have been legally enforceable. The State legislature could pre-commit to elect Senators by Sortition but then they could bail out and just decided to choose who they want when it came to the actual selection.

I am definitely not a lawyer, but "chosen... by the People of the several States" does not say the method of this choice. If the people of my state decide that the RNG decides, is that not "chosen by the People" of my state? Or if we still hold elections but one of the choices on the ballot is "RNG-chosen candidate"?

I would like to mention that this is not just "Bernie's idea". It's how elections are run in a lot of countries, including mine (Spain).

Publicly funded elections & doing things like repealing citizens united would address the expense. It is very time consuming though.

Citizens United isn’t a law, it’s a shitty Supreme Court decision. It’s on the long list of obvious problems we can’t fix without first reforming the courts (I favor increasing the justice count to match the number of circuits, and also drawing the Supreme Court justices by lot for each session from the “lower” courts—shouldn’t be any constitutional issues with that approach, so it’s just a normal law, and it ought to be easier to sell than simply expanding the court and “packing” it since it’s less-partisan)

I don't know how you repeal citizens united. That decision basically fucked the US over for a very long time. I'll probably be dead before it's fixed.

It's an interesting idea. Is that what's happening? The article doesn't suggest it. People like Richard Burr, Chris Collins or Nancy Pelosi were certainly wealthy enough cover these expenses. It didn't stop them from seeking other ways to make money via their position. If your goal is to stop insider trading, you should focus on stopping insider trading.

If your goal is to make it easier to travel to and live in DC, well, congress has the power to address housing (especially in DC) and airline costs for all Americans.

The comment above specifically also said to create and enforce laws against insider trading, in addition to the pay increase.

    > congress has the power to address ... airline costs for all Americans.

This is the first that I heard that airline costs are too high in the US. Can you share more? What needs to be done?

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