A possible Amendment is passing around

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, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are 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 are void effective 1/1/12. 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, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

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.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!!

If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete.

I just put this on Facebook. I hope you don't mind!

:)

see post # 11.

Just to track how many of them are meeting with the Kochs and other enemies of the American public.

Members of Congress do participate in Social Security; they have since 1984.


Congress doesn't vote on raises anymore. Their pay is already automatically increased based on a cost-of-living formula unless they vote to stop it (which they have for the last 2 years).



Which health care system? Members of Congress are given the same options as the millions of federal employees. If we had a government-run universal health care system from which Congress exempted themselves, then this would make sense.



What exactly does this mean — other than simply re-confirming that everyone must obey the law?



I believe the majority of full time working Americans participate in employer-sponsored plans; they don't buy them out of their own pocket.



What contracts?

It doesn't have to actually mean anything Mr. Buzzkill. Let them have their warm 'n fuzzy stick it to the man moment and it will pass.

It would please me. To pass it would be a victory for the citizens.

and this e-mail is one of the dumbest ideas around. The authors of e-mails like this have little idea how Congress actually works. For example, the entire House of Representatives would turn over in 2 years?

Complete nonsense and a monumentally bad idea. Of course, the Tea Party will lap it up.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/socialsecurity/pensions.asp

Embedding any sort of compound growth without a safety valve is bad news and virtually guarantees that Congressional pay will outstrip economic growth over the long term by a very large margin, until the best paying job in the country will be Congressman. They will manipulate the CPI for self-enrichment no less easily than they manipulate it for self-promotion.

I think congressional pay should be equal to the median wage (or average wage I don't care which) of the bottom 95% of wage earners. If maintaining a residence is DC AND back home is too expensive then I don't mind if we build a dorm for them connected to the tunnels going to Congress, the WH and the Pentagon.

The other option is their pay should be voted on by the folks back home that hired them.

living in a "dorm" thank you very much.

The amendment would cap pay increases at the lower of CPI or 3%. That means that, whenever there's a year of significant inflation, the real value of Congressional pay would go down. The problem would be hard to fix, with a specific formula embodied in the Constitution.

As the purchasing power of Congressional pay falls, people who rely on their jobs for income find it more and more of a hardship to run for Congress. It becomes more and more a club of the independently wealthy who can afford to take a significant pay cut because they're still clipping their dividend coupons.

A limit on campaign spending, or public campaign finance with automatic TV access as a condition of licensing.

Limits on lobbying or revolving door jobs. (I don't care what they make while in office. The problem is they make 10 times as much once they get their "consulting" gigs with corporate sectors they favored. Your first clause seems intended to address this but is very unclear.)

Proportional representation. Ending the winner-take-all system, which is not representative but plurality-chooses-unaccountable-leader.

Ending corporate personhood.

These would change the system. Congressional pay is one of those popular feel-good (or feel-angry) issues that wouldn't make much of a difference.

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/03/congressional-reform-act/

http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/28thamendment.asp


(Ed. to add Snopes link.)

Right down the list, a pile of steaming stupid sloppily served.

For example, number "1".

No tenure? What tenure? Huh?

No pension. Ok, why? One HUGE problem with congress is the corruption of "the revolving door", wherein congress critters go from gummint to industry, frequently to the very industry they just legislated on, and at huge renumeration. Massive exchange of cash for services rendered. Now that is a problem, a problem that would be made somewhat worse by not having a pension system in place, thus increasing the incentive to be a corrupt asshat.

"No pension" is rightwing populism that seeks to punish "people with pensions" by taking away those pensions, because most of us have lost ours. The leftwing version of this demands pensions for everyone. See the difference?