President Herbert Hoover announced on July 15, 1932, he was slashing his own salary by 20 percent, from $75,000 to $60,000 a year; he also cut his cabinet members' salaries by 15 percent, from $15,000 to $12,750 a year. It doesn't seem like any of our political leaders are willing to do this today.
Herbert Hoover should have taken more than a pay-cut. He should have resigned from office and summoned the spirit of Grover Cleveland or summoned the previous president, Calvin Coolidge, to take the reigns of the Executive office and do. . . nothing!
Hoover was not a laissez-faire politician, contrary to what most souped-up, watered-down American History textbooks attest. Rather, he instituted an interventionist policy, begging businesses around the country not to cut wages and also signing into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which set off a protectionist war around the global and hobbled international trade, severing economic recovery and dulling a market correction into a recession.
Ron Paul is the latest politician who pledged to cut his paycheck when elected President. I think that more presidential candidates should consider doing the same thing, since the President should not be doing more than what Congress has authorized him to do.
Hoover did too much, and FDR continued the same inane interventionism, receding the recession-correction into a depression, which even World War II did not end.