A grand bargain

Against all evidence, many still believe that it is possible to have big government that is also good government. They do not accept a trade-off between the two. This is why it is called the romantic view of government.

The many trillions of dollars now available to politicians creates insurmountable temptation and inevitable problems of pork, graft and corruption.

Tom Sowell suggests that the combination of very high salaries ("I don't make a million dollars a year but I think every member of Congress should be paid at least as much. It's not because those turkeys in Washington deserve it. It's because we deserve a lot better people than we have in Congress.") to politicians along with term limits that work (one term in any political office per lifetime, period).

We are unlikely to shrink government but politcians just might vote themselves a pay raise. In other words, we agree to accept the idea that they vote themselves a million-dollar salary and in return, they enact tough term limits that apply to them and to all of their successors.

For taxpayers, this would be money well spent.