You do realize that the status quo would not cut spending at all, only increasing our debt problem until we are in a hole we cannot dig out of.
False. The status quo IS shrinking the debt. See "supercommitee failure." $1.2 trillion in debt reduction. Sure, when you translate that into actual budgetary numbers it's only a 2% cut in operational outlays. But it's a step. Yes, it's sub-optimal, but to act like we have a "do-nothing" government is preposterous: the means of their doing is non-traditional and sub-optimal, but hardly stalemated.
Crisis creates the political will, or the market necessity, to resolve it. Thus far, US politicians have proven to have the political will to cut budgets. They are "on the edge" right now, as both Moody's and Fitch have noted recently. But, thus far, the US has not shown the same crippling inability to manage its own debt as, say, Greece. We also have less debt compared to GDP, which is important.
In a system where campaign spending isn't regulated by law, sure. But in Canada, only people can give money to political parties (not corporations or unions), and they can only give so much per year (1000$ in Québec), and the parties then have spending limits during election campaigns. This was done to counter lobby groups who could basically own some politicians. So say you theoretically double the number of MPs, you would need to half what each candidate can spend during elections (seriously limiting their budget and inciting illegality), or you'd end up with the MPs totaling twice the spending limit. Not to mention you pay twice as much in salary and various advantages. And when you consider that the parties hold basically absolute authority over their MPs, I think you could shrink or quadruple the number of MPs and see no difference in the national assembly.
Here I reveal myself. I think campaign spending regulations are foolish, and am firmly on the side of corporate personality. Yes, in a system like Canada's, it could create incentives for criminality to have a large legislature. But in the US, our legislature is actually very small compared to the size of our nation. We have 535 directly elected representatives in our legislature compared to 300 million people. That's 585,000 people per rep. Canada has 113k per rep, France 71k, UK 95k, Spain 75k, Italy 64k, Ireland 27k, and Germany 132k.
In sum, the US does not have a deficit of persons interested and probably competent for the office. And congressional salaries are not that big of a cost compared to the size of the government. What we do have is a body of legislators with enormous power and sway, but comparatively small, so more easily influenced. Going from 535 reps to, say, 3000 reps would have huge new costs and make policy-making a process far less dominated by personalities and radicals, but rather by party machines, who tend to be more moderate and compromise-oriented. This would have some serious downsides, but would also make it more possible for representatives to be connected to their local constituencies.
The US system is of course not properly comparable to France, Ireland, and Italy, as the US has large state legislatures. But comparisons with other federal structures, like Germany, Canada, and the UK still has the US with an exceptionally small legislature.
