Restoring Liberty: Congressional reform begins with stopping Congress from spending us into oblivion—and that begins with a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
To make that happen, I propose using a tool our Founders gave us—the Article V amendment process.
Some of the Founders themselves recognized the need for such an amendment. For example, Thomas Jefferson first proposed an amendment in 1798 to keep Congress from borrowing money. Twenty trillion dollars in debt later, we can understand why.
On top of that, we need to put more limits on federal power, which can be done with the budget, and term limits on members of Congress.
I propose these solutions as someone who has experienced Congress’ business-as-usual corruption firsthand. I know they can work. And I know what won’t work. read more
A BB amendment is lovely conceptually but ignores the elephant in the room: The central govt refuses to do anything that even remotely resembles bookkeeping. Until the govt starts using generally accepted accounting practices, there will always be ways to finagle the numbers so the pols get what they want. And giving the taxpayer the shaft is one of the things they want.
One simple thing that might help is to make it a federal felony for legislators to vote Yes on any bill later found to be unconstitutional, likewise for the prez to sign it into law. Five years in prison, forfeiture of all pay and retirement bennies, prohibition on ever holding elected office or govt employment of any kind, and barred from ever registering as a lobbyist.
What Uncle Al wrote.
And a Balanced Budget Amendment (depending upon wording) would be an excuse to raise taxes at every turn.
Better to Repeal the 16th and 17th and strive to elect honorable men.
(yeah, I know, wish in one hand and …)
Oh, you don’t need a Constitutional Amendment, but make lying to the American people (whether on or off TV) to be a Capital Offense – no appeal, no mitigation, carried out within a fortnight. And if we re-take our position as sovereign of our nation, then lying to the American people is TREASON (and dissimulation and “spin” are lies). And this has the beauty that any politician who opposes it is proclaiming himself a liar, or at minimum, a supporter of lying to the American people.
izlamo delenda est …
Congress shall pass no law in which congressional members are exempted from.
Any corrupt politician (redundant term) caught stealing money from the people or … selling our uranium to Russia, should be tarred & feathered head to toe to seal in the stench from being hung by the neck and left up in public for 1 year.
Be careful, when revenues exceed the budget, then the Uni-party can just spend more to balance the budget and you get larger more wasteful government. There are not always savings in a balanced budget amendment.
What would also drain the swamp is prosecuting and incarcerating the politicians who have broken the law and not upheld the law.
At last count I saw 9 states ready for
a constitutional convention. We’ll see how
it progresses.