You get that check box if you want $3 to Presidential election campaign fund, I find myself wondering how effective a similar check box would be for annual congressional/presidential pay?
Like, these guys make, Sen/house/Pres combined, somewhere around a billion dollars. I wonder how effective it would be if we left a tax checkbox "Check here if you want $5 to got to federal elected official pay" or "Check $0, $1, $5, $10, $25" and people can do a bit of that voting with their pocket book thing.
So you pay all of them exactly minimum wage, and we total up all the cash allocated on the tax returns. There's something like 160 million filed each year IIRC. You divide that evenly, or proportionally (Pres/VP get a bigger share etc) and that's what they make, min wage plus whatever the citizens feel like giving them when they are filing their taxes. Same as the Pres Fund, it is not a donation coming directly from your own taxes, so nobody would be checking it to personally save money.
Personally, I think the idea is brilliant
"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman