FROM MY EMAIL. This has been making the email rounds (again) recently so I thought I'd post it as food for thought.

When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers must find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well.

Wall street and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of "tough decision", and the board of directors gives upper corporate management big bonuses.

Our government should not be immune from similar risks. Therefore I suggest reducing the House of Representatives from its current 435 members to 218. Reduce Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Then reduce the remaining Congressional staff by 25%.

The yearly monetary gains include:

$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for Congress (267 members X $165,200 pay/member/ year).

$437,100,000 for elimination of their staff (estimated at $1.3M in staff per each member of the House, and $3M in staff per each member of the Senate every year)

$108,350,000 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.

$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork each year (current estimates for total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion/year).

Estimated savings: $8,084,558,400 per year. Corporate America does these types of cuts all the time. There's even a name for it: "Downsizing."