How to Fix Congress

[maiforpeace]

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. 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."

Proposing the:

*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.

[Ian]

A huge problem is how people get nominated and win their seats in Congress in the first place, and by that I mean Gerrymandering and the levels of fundraising required for any seats that are remotely competitive. Solving the former could be handled by taking the districting power away from state legislatures, since they're so partisan, and hand it to a neutral party (probably the Census Bureau) with oversight from a strictly bi-partisan committee. Solving the latter? That's tougher, especially now since the catastrophic Citizens United ruling, but campaign finance reforms have been in the works for ages; sooner or later there might be some real progress. Maybe.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Warren, you really think politicians wouldn't cheat?"

[Atheist-Lite]

Wealthy people with power don't give it away.

[Thinking Aloud]

The initial quote is Buffett's, but the rest has, apparently, been circulating as a chain email since at least 2009, and isn't connected with him.

[amused]

A huge problem is how people get nominated and win their seats in Congress in the first place, and by that I mean Gerrymandering and the levels of fundraising required for any seats that are remotely competitive.

This.

In any given election 85-90% of incumbents win their US congressional seat because of gerrymandering. Which means they are free to ignore the actual voters and pander only to those that make big campaign contributions - the 1%.

The fix is to require that all US congressional districts be drawn such that the perimeter length is the shortest distance possible to enclose the appropriate number of people. Picking the original center points then becomes the argument.

[Warren Dew]

People should keep in mind that while the approval rate of congress overall is abysmal, peoples' approval of their own congressmen is still pretty high.

So is there a "problem" with congress? Only to the extent that there's a "problem" with representative democracy as a system, I suspect.

[Ian]

People should keep in mind that while the approval rate of congress overall is abysmal, peoples' approval of their own congressmen is still pretty high.

So is there a "problem" with congress? Only to the extent that there's a "problem" with representative democracy as a system, I suspect.

See my post above about Gerrymandering. Of course most people like their own congressmen: most districts are by design not very competitive.

[Warren Dew]

Even in competitive districts, winning congressmen usually get a majority of the vote.

I think the "of course" is this: of course the average person disapproves of most of congress. Most of congress is trying to help districts that the person doesn''t live in.