Sent to me this week and I liked it enough to share. Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling: "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election". It doesn't take long to pass an amendment: The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it ! That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure. Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around. _*Congressional Reform Act of 2011*_ 1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office. 2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. 3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. 4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%. 5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people. 6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. 7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Don't you think it's time? THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!
I hope this passes. I've long had a voting policy of "when in doubt, vote incumbents out." Not because I want to punish them when they may have done a good job, but rather because the longer one remains in office, the higher the risk of corruption and the more likely it is that they'll make holding office a means to a political career rather than actually serving the public. It also helps that people like Mica would have been voted out and replaced with somebody who didn't have face-saving concerns regarding the unceremonious (expletive deleted)-canning of the entire TSA. Congresspeople who create programs as worthless as TSA often develop emotional and/or ideological attachments to them and consider it a sign of failure if they later move for reform. Look how long it took Mica to call TSA "his little bastard child." It wasn't until Reichskommissar John S. Pistole instituted scope-n-grope and started ordering his smurf-clerks to molest children, the elderly, the disabled, and decorated war veterans under suspicion of anti-'murrican turrism that Mica finally woke up. And that's one member of congress. Uno. Unum. Eine. Given the responses I've got from my elected officials (form letters from Durbin, apologetics and excuses from Schakowsky, and "Sorry that happened, I've forwarded your concerns to TSA. Returning my attention to foreign relations and charter schools now, kthxbye." from Kirk, I'm down for writing the entire goddamn body of Congress pink slips and starting fresh.
Since Congress has to vote on proposed amendments something like this has zero chance of ever seeing the light of day. Rule number one for members of Congress, take care of thyself first!
Actually that is not true. A constitutional amendment must be proposed by either house of Congress or by a Constitutional Convention called by 2/3rds if the state legislators. None of the Constitutional Amendments passed so far have been by a Constitutional Convention.
On that point I agree fully, but we still have to have a majority of people who vote the same way. I tend to favor term limits since that provides and end game for each legislator. Term limits has its on flaws but I think it is superior than having a person in office for life.
Sadly, the term limits do not provide an end-of-game for the legislators. It's too common for them to get into "consultancy" after they've voted in favor of certain special interest groups. Look at Chertoff's involvement with Rapiscan after leaving his post - it happens at all levels.
So what is your solution to life long legislators? In cases such as Chertoff's there should be a period of time where former senior members of government, elected or otherwise, should not be able to engage in activities with businesses who contract or have other goods purchased by government. I would suggest at least 5 years lapse before such relations are permissible.
