text: The president's salary would be cut from $400,000 to approximately $39,000 per year (the median personal income of the American worker), and congressional pay and perks would be slashed.
  Paul has stressed that certain essential responsibilities currently performed by agencies that he proposes to eliminate would be assumed by remaining agencies, or in the case of aviation management (FAA and TSA), would be transferred to the private sector.
  Although Paul has often said that his ultimate goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and eliminate the income tax, the Plan to Restore America does not address that specific goal.
  Following the unveiling of the plan, critics were quick to remark on the negative consequences for the economy that budget changes of the magnitude being proposed could have in the short term. Kevin Hassett, economic policy director of the American Enterprise Institute and chief economic adviser to John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, praised Paul's aim of reducing the size of government but worried that, "At the scale he's talking about, it's unlikely you could have an immediate reduction in government without hurtling the economy into recession." Economist Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said that "This is almost having the economy fall off a cliff."