As we watch the dismally unpopular Congress slog through it's empty work (led by those two stellar All-American leaders - Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) the need for congressional reforms becomes painfully evident. The need for substantive reforms in how Congress operates generally and how the leadership controls the process in particular have been long overdue and just how needed such reforms are can't be more clear than when watching the current leadership.
Their total lack of bipartisanship and use of untruths, false praise, and political posturing when discussing any and all issues have accounted to a large degree for their nearly total ineffectiveness and abysmal popularity among the public.
I have heard both Pelosi and Reid give as their reason for opposing different pieces of legislation a position effectively equivalent to "My caucus opposes that so there is no way I will support it or allow votes on it". Where is the Democratic Caucus mentioned in the Constitution? Were these people elected to their posts by the democratic caucus? As a minimum I believe they were elected by a majority of each house. Too bad they leave whatever little tiny bit of bipartisanship they have at the door and represent "their" caucus rather than thinking of the American people as a whole. Their positions of leadership have grown beyond all reasonable expectations of the Founding fathers and this power is anathema to an effective legislature. They have no real accountability to the people of the United States in their leadership positions as they answer questions only when (and from whom) they wish.
In this spirit I propose a few "rule changes" that I believe would do much toward returning the Congress to the People of this country.
Therefore, I propose that a "pool" reporter system be instituted where one of several rotating media people accompany the Speaker of the House (Pelosi) and Senate Majority Leader (Reid) at all times during their entire legislative day (including traveling, meetings, etc.). In this way, an accurate and full picture of the actions and words (and any threats or promises) of the Congressional "leadership" can be documented and made available to the American people. This shouldn't be a problem as I'm sure that their "Yes" is always yes and "No" is no regardless of who is in the audience. I'm sure that there are never any threats applied toward fellow democrats to vote a certain way (especially when they might be considering support for some republican initiative). There could be a 72-hr hold on story release but the "truth" would come out. If a Speaker of the House is honestly promoting positions based on logic and facts (as the American people deserve) rather than on power and position there can be no qualms about such an arrangement. As elected officials they have no right to any "privacy" especially if they are using that privacy and their power to pressure or threaten other legislators in a purely political or partisan fashion. Think of it as an "open-meetings" rule applied to the Congressional leadership. If their goals are the betterment of the country instead of the betterment of their political fortunes then they would have nothing to fear from such increased transparency and public scrutiny.
Second, since spending bills are initiated in the House, the Speaker should verbally explain every earmark in proposed bills to the full House (and therefore to the country) prior to vote. This would put pressure on the Congress to reduce the use of earmarks which are effectively a tool to buy patronage and votes. The current practice of slipping earmark spending projects into legislation without public scrutiny or discussion is corruption and shouldn't be tolerated by anyone.
The third area where corruption reigns is in the use of the tax code as a vehicle to reward and punish. Tax changes are used by Congress to cultivate special interests (that will never go away), punish industries (oil company windfall profits), and continually disrupt the tax code costing American millions in compliance costs. This is normally done well below the radar of the public to oversee their shenanigans. The answer is to implement the FairTax which will effectively remove the Congress from constant tinkering with the tax code to gain votes. Many other benefits accrue as well.
[See http://www.fairtax.org for details.]
These changes would improve accountability in government, identify and reward ethical leadership and shrink the size of government. What a deal.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 19
I'm no expert but as I understand it everyone gets a rebate to compensate them for the taxes paid by someone spending up to a certain level. So if that's what you spend, you pay no tax at all. How is it regressive? Higher income people buy more stuff so they would be taxed more. Period. Plus there are whole parts of the economy (black market, sheltered income folks, dividends-only retirees etc.) that currently pay no tax. The fairtax brings all these peope into the tax base. It does take a paradigm shift to consider it's ramifications fully. The reason Congress won't look at it is they would lose control of the taxcode as a patronage tool.
It is not, btw, the flat tax. It is called fairtax. go to the site and study it then comment on it.
And the flat-tax would work; toss-out the 7-million-page IRS code, eliminate all deductions and NPOs, and just whack 10% off all income. Individuals, corporations, dividends, everything. It sure as hell has worked for the Mormons, so it should work just as well for the U.S. government.
First, do you perceive that the tax code is (or could be) used for the nefarious purposes I outline. If so , how to stop that? Second, as I already told you the lower spender (get income out of your head) gets rebated ALL their taxes. Third, have you even studied the fair-tax proposal and gone to the site and checked it out? My guess is no. You zeroed in on 1 of 3 solutions I proposed to a bigger problem (a broken and ineffective Congress). That's ok I guess, but why won't you even take the time to legitimately critique that solution nor comment on the merit of the larger issue.
Consider the inefficiency of the IRS, the taxes that are not paid on illegal income AND the taxes are are not collected from illegal aliens, some self employed and others who fail to file....just for starters.
Don't you think another approach to taxation is at least worth a look?
I could fully support your set of "rule changes" if and only if they would apply equally to the minority leadership and members. Now that would be a real circus! After three hours of watching C-SPAN there is little wonder that Congress' approval rating is 9%.
I have no problem with your addition, however, it is the case that the majority leaders control Congress (not the other way around).
So, let's impeach the President and Vice President and put them in jail, along with the criminal Karl von Rove and other Republican henchmen, and then, after we restore the Constitution, we can talk about minor issues.
Granted, neither side does much except "self-sustaining" games. The "your side did this so my side doing that is not so bad" circular argument gets us no-place fast . Honestly though, I've raised the same flag more than once.
The problem is 'process' and the fix should apply to both sides. My proposals would. The trick is how do we get either set of leadership to recognize the 'broken-state' of things (since it's only viewed as broken when the other guys are in charge)? Maybe open-to-all mandatory weekly press conferences by the leadership (not the current ones where only 'friendlies' are allowed in), maybe a 2-3 person rotating "head citizen" group who can get any questions answered from whichever leadership they choose to ask (answers made public), maybe some other solutions.
The point is the system works poorly for the citizen (regardless of who is in charge) and needs to be fixed. What do we do?