Time to go: Dedicated to all Five Hundred and Thirty-five
Special interests control our Congress. There is no denying this fact. The Military Industrial Complex, leftists woke groups, international globalists, Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Pharma, education unions and indoctrination groups, along with all of the other Bigs and their vile lobbyists dump large truckloads of gruel into the feeding troughs for the Washington pigs who greedily slop up every last gulp; then they raise their heads, licking their jowls for more. You can almost hear the beep-beep from big rigs backing into the loading docks at Capitol Hill, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s a cartel and it needs to be busted.
Fundraising is a full-time job. Both representatives and senators expend outrageous amounts of time making donor calls, attending fundraisers, and cozying up to lobbyists in order to maintain their advantage for November. Both parties then reward the office holders with plum committee assignments based on the amount of cash raised -- which in turn leads to more cash from their K Street buds.
It’s nearly impossible to fight these usurpers. We have to refortify legislative clout with a new Congress that focuses on the people and not crony interests. We need to end the bureaucratic nightmare and put Congress -- the states and the people -- back into control of the bureaucracies, affectionally known as the Deep State.
Our Founders believed in a representative legislature as co-equal with the executive and judicial branches of government. They were also well aware of the ills from a truly democratic Congress, where 51% can dictate to the other 49%, equating to “mob rule”. The pitfalls of having both chambers of Congress as democratic institutions were thus eliminated, with a Senate that would provide the states -- who created the federal government -- direct representation, and a House that would allow for populism by the people. They believed that the Senate, selected by state legislatures, would become a moderating, more deliberative body that would temper the everchanging whims of the people.
The Progressives gave us the 17th Amendment that negated that balance; and mob rule has now engulfed both chambers of Congress. Senatorial elections increased the influence of national political parties and the need for ever-growing amounts of money to finance statewide races. In turn the voice of the people and the states became secondary to winning at all costs.
Term limits have been offered as a solution but simple term limits only heighten the mania that will be thrown at us every two and six years. Currently, there are “safe” seats that can last upward of fifty years! With more turnover comes more party control and more corruptible cash rushed in to win more open races. The unintended consequences of simple term limits may deliver the exact opposite of what we believe would result in best government practices.
The greatest way to minimize the corruption is to remove most of the money from the equation. The goal of minimizing the influence of the political parties will allow more independent voices to be heard and engage the citizenry as it hasn’t in a long while.
The proposal for reforming the Senate, then, is really quite simple: repeal the 17th Amendment and return to the state legislatures their right of direct representation to the federal government. Without senatorial elections, state parties would be free to focus upon state’s issues and not how to play to the national crowd.
Reforming the House, in order to achieve a more just representation for the people, must be more creative. We want representatives that are more responsive to their constituents and focused on the fact that the money they spend is from us, not make-believe tokens created from thin air at the behest of the out-of-control centralized government planners.
The first part of an effective amendment to the Constitution would establish three two-year terms for a representative without the ability to again run for Congress once the terms have expired. After a first-term representative is elected, the next two elections will be votes of confidence: Do you wish to retain the service of your elected representative for two more years? If yes, then he or she retains the job. If no, a new adversarial election is held, excluding, of course, the fired representative.
There are many advantages to this system, one spawning a total focus by the representative on the constituents in order to retain the job. Another is that voters would be compelled to focus only on their representative’s job performance instead of being distracted by some toothy used car salesman, shot up with Beltway cash, droning on in commercials that appear to be made by the same slick political consultant as his or her opponent’s.
On its own this is a very strong step toward breaking the cartel. However, it does not eliminate the vast amounts of campaign cash from out-of-district and out-of-state special interests.
A second section of this amendment would require a fifty-fifty split between in-district and out-of-district campaign contributions. If all a candidate can do is raise fifty-bucks from his or her neighbors, then Georgie Soros can contribute $50. Not one cent more. A subsection of this clause would require instant disclosure of all individual contributions, including contributors to all 501(c) and other non-profit special interest organizations that advocate for a specific candidate. This would include individuals within groups contributing to dark money shell organizations; and it most certainly will pertain to national political parties.
The last section of this amendment would prohibit federal government employees from contributing to congressional campaigns, whether as individuals or through federal government employee unions, political parties, or any of the advocacy/special interest groups covered in the second section. In what world does an employee get to bribe his or her boss?
Are there going to be unintended consequences? Most certainly. There are always loopholes that will have to be plugged. This also may deprive us of the few good legislators that we have, but we must agree, no one is irreplaceable. The belief that we already have term limits by the vote is laughable. So long as political parties control the elections there will be no effective way of controlling the cartel.
There will be good consequences, too. With more seats opening, better people will come forward without fear of stepping on the marketing plan from their political party. They won’t have to play the role of Ken or Barbie and moderate their views to fit a national narrative that doesn’t play well in Peoria. Candidates would be free to offer original ideas that might actually make a difference in people’s ordinary lives; and they won’t be focused on long term political perks.
Let’s face it: political parties are abject failures at governing. The massive amount of power concentrated in but a few geriatric party powerbrokers -- who long ago became cynical to the idea of We, the People -- spawn only deals for power and money, not policy to return freedoms stolen in the night.
Holding your nose and voting for your party’s candidate should no longer be the modus operandi under which we are governed. Fear of what your government can do to you instead of what they should do for you must come to an end.