Budget reduction beginning at the top- Part one

I believe that people should be compensated justly for what they do, however in these difficult times, sacrifices must be made. Congress should put everything on the table, including their own salaries and other officials who eventually get rich doing whatever they do. According to my calculations, simply by paying 80% of salary to our senators, representative, and federal judges, we would cut the federal budget by  $120,000,000. The congressional part includes all 535 senators and congress persons base salaries. The judicial part include approximately 3000 federal judge positions. Include the supreme court justices and another $400,000 can be added. I looked at the 182 ambassador positions, but their compensation at between $130-170,000 may be okay. Perhaps we don't need an ambassador to Fiji, since we seem to do without them in countries like Iran.

Maybe this could be looked upon as nickel and dimeing a budget that is way out of control, but that seems to be an approach that some would like to take, so let's go for it.

Letter to Senator Gillibrand

We have been retired from public school teaching for about 12 years now. We  have pensions from the NYSTRS and Social Security. This year we filed our 2010 tax return, and holy cow, our taxes actually went up $288. Our return indicates substantially the same income figures as last year. We had ordered with held the correct amount to cover the taxes. What changed? The standard deduction was lowered by $1000. (Our itemization indicated that this was the best deduction to take.) Our taxes went up, contrary to what had been loudly proclaimed over the past couple of months. There is an injustice here. And it probably extends to all who must take the standard deduction. Perhaps the richer among us should not be able to itemize deductions, but  take only the standard deduction.
And a final note... there was no social security cost of living increase nor lump sum rebate as was given in previous years.
We old folks are paying for the tax cut to the rich. Please share this with your colleagues on all sides of the aisle, and the president.