Well, at long last, a rabid right-wing acquaintance of mine sent me one of those emails churned out by the Tea Party noise machine that I can actually get on board with.
You may have seen it too. It’s entitled “My Twenty People,” and it offers a prescription for fixing what’s wrong with Congress.
“You're part of my 20 people,” it says. “Hoping you will send this on to your 20 so we get this out before November. 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. Maybe it is time. "
Congressional Reform Act of 2010
.
Term Limits.
12 years only, one of the possible options below:
Two Six-year Senate terms
Six Two-year House terms
One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
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.
Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
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, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work. "
Well maybe it IS time for some fundamental changes in the way our self-serving Congress operates. At the very least, if there were term limits they wouldn’t be constantly running for office and forced to be whores for the big money elite. (Note to Meg Whitman: “Whore” is synonymous with “sell-out”, so don’t get all self-righteous on me.)
And you can bet your bippy if they had to go out on the open market and buy health insurance like the rest of us do, they’d pass single-payer in a flash. Dick Cheney would be first in line to champion it. After all, we taxpayers have been funding his gold-plated health care since his first heart attack at 37. Without our benevolence, he would have been shut out of the insurance risk pool 30 years ago, and quite likely, be long dead by now.
Now just think of the money THAT could have saved us.
Term limits are an absolutely terrible idea. You need only to look at the dysfunctional California Legislature to see the havoc they have caused.
ReplyDeleteAbout the time a legislator knows where his or her desk is, they are termed out. The result is that the only folks who know what's going on or how to accomplish anything in Sacramento are the lobbyists and special interests. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having elected leaders who know their jobs and how to do them.
What we need are legislative districts and Congressional districts that are competitive so that the representatives have to be responsive to the people.
What happens now is that most districts are designed to be safe for one party or the other. Thus the elected representatives tend to come from the more extreme wings of either party and the result is partisan gridlock and name calling.
There was a time when political opponents could actually sit down at the end of the day and have a drink together. President Ronald Reagan and Majority Leader 'Tip' O'Neill -- about as far apart on the political spectrum as possible -- enjoyed each other socially. They also actually managed to compromise sometimes and get things done.
We've got to return to those days.
O'Neill also has some interesting thoughts about politics, which I'll share:
1. "All politics is local."
2. "It's easier to run for office than to run the office."
3. "A good lesson in keeping your perspective is: Take your job seriously but don't take yourself seriously."
4. "You better take advantage of the good cigars. You don't get much else in that job."
Back to the original point: Term limits are terrible. We just need to make sure that our representatives remember why they are there and that election districts are structured so that races are competitive.