Convention of States? Count Me — and My Suggestions — In!
by Mike Martin
Clash Daily Contributor
When a Convention Of States is held – I want to be a delegate!
As a Constitutional Conservative I could probably submit scores of amendments that would improve our Government and our Freedoms. Scores of Constitutional Amendments won’t be passed/approved at either the Convention nor after by the 75 % of State Legislatures needed for approval. Each proposed amendment will need documentation as what it is intended to mean. Sort of the Federalist Papers in advance. They must of necessity be believed to be necessary by at least 2/3 of Americans to stand a chance at being adopted. Because of this, amendments must also generally be NON-PARTISAN .
Wait, you say, if the proposed amendments need to be non-partisan then why doesn’t Congress just do them? They do not want to restrict their own power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The more power the President, the Congress, and the Courts have – the more corrupt that they become. It is past time to prune some of the power they have taken unconstitutionally, thus pruning much of the corruption.
Some suggestions for amendments pertaining to Congress have been suggested . A balanced budget amendment. Term limits. A Taxation limit. A usage limit on spending. So the vast majority of Americans don’t want the government to spend more money than they take in, but they can’t decide what should be funded and what should be cut, thus they haven’t passed spending bills, only continuing resolutions which continue to raise spending without any budgeting. So an amendment to balance the budget is needed. There are some principles that must be met in balancing the budget.
Principles: If no balanced budget is passed, then any continuing resolution may only authorize spending at 90% of the prior years tax receipts. Yes this would require either a budget or an actual spending decrease that is not delayed for 10 years down the road. The Government debt would have to be paid off thru a 30 year amortization period. Any year that contains a deficit would require new elections with the Congress that caused the deficit being forever barred from holding public office. Tax receipts will be maxed at 21 % of GDP and expenditures capped initially at 18 % and decreasing 1 % per annum upon a majority vote of Congress. It would require a 67 % majority of both houses to raise expenditures.
Income may not be redistributed. Income redistribution is mainly a way for politicians to buy votes and cannot be permitted. This would shut down all the Federal level Welfare, Food Stamps, Health Insurance, Housing Assistance and the weighted portion of Social Security benefits. This would not shut down these programs altogether, but would place most of them back under the States Jurisdiction where it belongs.
Term Limits are necessary so that politicians cannot accumulate too much power. The experiment of direct Senatorial elections would be stopped and they would again be appointed by the State Legislatures thus reinforcing States Rights so that they can reign in Federal Power. So that they cannot unduly profit from their term in office, their assets must be placed in a blind trust while in office. Their pensions could not exceed 2% of their base salary per year in office. For term limit for House representatives, two term limit for Senate members, and two term Limit for President. Thus, an individual who served four terms in the House ( eight years ), two terms in the Senate ( twelve years ) would receive a pension of 40 % of their average earning over their period of service and if also elected for two Terms as President ( eight years ) could receive a maximum of a 56 % Pension. Most would never reach this figure.
For those that say poor people can’t afford to serve, build the equivalent of Dormitories for Congress to stay in with cafeteria’s serving food, then their salaries could be cut, decreasing their pension costs in retirement.
Suggestions on restrictions of POTUS and SCROTUM ( excuse me SCOTUS ) branches to follow……
Image; Courtesy of: http://constitution-a.wikispaces.com/Benjamin+Franklin
Mike Martin thanks you for the opportunity to express “different points of views”, and if you were to ask his family they would probably tell you that he’s as different as they come…
