Via Mashable, I see there’s a new iPhone app that donates money to charity every time you hit “snooze” on your phone’s alarm clock.

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

It’s not an entirely original idea — Peter Orszag, for example, has said that he contributes to a charity he dislikes when he doesn’t achieve his running goals — but it’s a creative idea nonetheless, and a nice application for behavioral economics.

I wonder: Would it be possible to design a similar mechanism for Congress?

After all, legislators keep giving themselves a deadline by which they must decide on fiscal policy reforms, and then at the last minute they defer action by saying they’ll come up with a new policy proposal by a new deadline. And when that deadline comes, the process repeats itself, creating even more uncertainty with each iteration. I’d say that all these deferments are the equivalent of hitting snooze on the debt clock.

What constructive penalty could motivate them to finally wake up, as it were?

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