Some things are just common sense, and no elected official should ever be able to pass laws that they themselves are not subject to. Congress itself must abide by all laws that affect the rest of the nation—no special healthcare, retirement, or other programs that regular Americans do not have access to.
Furthermore, Congress may no longer vote to give raises to itself, POTUS, or SCOTUS. It will rise by the lower of the CPI or 3%. Those positions are a public trust, and no one should be doing it as a job or source of income to begin with, and what they currently make is more than sufficient “thanks” from a grateful nation for their service while in office. Now, at some future date should it be found that a member of Congress or a Supreme Court Justice is living in poverty, then by all means we will address it then if need be, but I think the chances of that are unlikely.
Ideally, and I know it is never going to happen, I would love for us to go back to the days of Congress being a part time volunteer duty by regular citizens who have day jobs, and just go to Washington a few times a year to sit, discuss, and vote on the actual business that needs to get done, and then go home again.
It is kind of like the 24 hour news cycle. If a news channel is going to be 24/7, it needs to find stories to cover 24/7, which gives it a huge incentive to make stories sound and seem bigger than they are, or in the event of a slow news cycle, over-cover the few stories they have to justify their existence.
The same goes for legislative bodies. If you make a legislative body sit in session full time, guess what, it is going to find things to do to make itself relevant, or if it cannot find those things, stall and delay on dealing with the few things it does have to do (sound familiar?).
Perry Waag 