New at Reason: Nick Gillespie on The Great Civics Lesson Taught Us By Al Franken & Norm Coleman

May 29, 2009

As the election fight between Al Franken and Norm Coleman goes to the Minnesota supreme court on June 1, Nick Gillespie reflects on the great civics lesson these two selfless patriots have taught us:

We've gotten by fine these past few months with just one senator from Minnesota. So fine, in fact, that in this century of constant cost-cutting and rising unemployment, the federal government should do its share by immediately downsizing the World's Greatest Deliberative Body by 50 percent.... Put plainly, the U.S. Senate has more dead weight than an Uruguayan rubgy squad.

Cutting the Senate workforce in half will immediately save $8.7 million per year in direct salary costs, plus millions more in pension plans, entourage costs, inevitable sexual-harassment lawsuits, and skyrocketing bean soup expenditures. If the folks who believe that government spending has a multiplier effect can be trusted (and they can't), then cutting government spending at the highest level should send more fiscally responsible ripples through the system than slapping Sen. Robert Byrd's stomach while he's playing Hooverball.

Read the whole piece.