Food for Thought

I received this message earlier today. The premise of the message is that We the People should band together and strip congress of most of their perks. A lofty goal indeed…

---Begin original Message---
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, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure. I'm 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. Term Limits. Twelve (12) years only, one of the possible options below..
A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure/No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

3. 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.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen 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.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete

Please keep it going.
---End original Message---

I’ve got some comments on the original text of this email. (Gee, THERE’S a shocker!!) The premise of the text is that our elected officials are corrupt, greedy, and believe themselves exempt from the very laws that they create. This is a sentiment that a large majority of Americans, myself included, seem to have toward politicians. The problem is that the original author seems to overlook the fact that the very politicians who receive these obscene benefits would have to support the legislation that strips them of their privileges – something that goes against human nature.

The email begins by referring to constitutional amendments, and implying that with enough grass-roots support, we could do virtually anything. What the author fails to recognize, however, is that constitutional amendments are, by design, very difficult to enact. There are four methods for a constitutional amendment to pass, two of which have never been used, and the third has been used only once. These paths are as follows…
• Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state conventions (never used)
• Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state legislatures (never used)
• Proposal by Congress, ratification by state conventions (used once)
• Proposal by Congress, ratification by state legislatures (used all other times)
My point is that for any constitutional amendment to become a reality, BOTH HOUSES will be required to pass the proposal by a 2/3 majority, and then 75% of the states have to ratify (approve) it. Considering that the politicians would be stripping themselves of the very privileges they have granted themselves, I think that it’s unrealistic to believe that 2/3 of congress will vote to pass a law turning them back into mere mortals. Furthermore, history has demonstrated that many of our federal officials have started out at the state level, so I have an equal amount of skepticism that the states would ratify such an amendment.

Let’s take a different approach and ask for simple legislation – a law that would enact the aforementioned recommendations. Do you believe that even a simple majority of our politicians would support these common sense recommendations? I certainly don’t! As I said before, this goes against human nature. To bring my point a little closer to home, ask yourself how you voted in the last one or two elections. Did you vote for a candidate who has a track record of restraint and fiscal discipline? Or did you vote for the candidate who promised to do the most to benefit YOU? It is very difficult to expect a politician to carry values that constituents don’t themselves possess. As an example, Americans are currently screaming that our government can’t continue spending money like drunken sailors, but we scream even louder when our tax bill increases, or when our Medicaid/Social Security entitlements decrease. We demand that legislators stop pork barrel spending, but re-elect our politicians when they bring home the bacon.

I still agree with the original author’s premise that our elected officials have too many perks, pay that’s too high, and benefits that are downright obscene. But until we can exercise a little bit of discipline of our own, I kind of wonder how much we can fault them.