Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Congressional Reform Act of 2010

I received this e-mail today and agreed with it (mostly)... so I'm posting it here for ya'll to debate.

1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.

A. Two six year Senate terms and six two year House terms
B. One six year Senate term and three two year House terms


2. No Tenure / No Pension:

A congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.


3. Congress (past, present and future) participates in Social Security:

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund moves to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, Congress participates with the American people.


4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

4 comments:

BAWDYSCOT said...

Obama catches heat over breaking campaign promise of openness


Earlier this week, we told you about the way that Democratic leaders in Congress plan to use an obscure legislative tactic known as "ping-pong" to bounce the health care reform bill back and forth between the House and the Senate to reconcile their differences. Their goal is to keep the final negotiations between House and Senate leadership (along with the White House), and avoid Republican input and likely delaying tactics. The White House, though, is now catching heat because many see this process as a direct betrayal of President Obama's oft-repeated promise to broadcast these negotiations live on television.

On Tuesday, Brian Lamb, the CEO of C-SPAN - the political television network that shows full coverage of policymaking in Washington, D.C. - sent a letter to the White House and leaders in Congress imploring them to allow the health care bill's final negotiations to be broadcast live and in their entirety on his network. Saying that C-SPAN would use the most advanced technology available in order to be "as unobtrusive as possible," Lamb wrote:

"President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation's editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation's health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American."


I got this off Yahoo News.

So much for fucking transparency, eh?

G said...

I've been seeing a "silver lining" here. It has taken a year, but even Obama's cheerleaders in the media have (FINALLY) started to call him out for his hypocrisy and deceit. I guess they've finally taken off their rose-colored glasses.

Cafferty Rips Obama

csm said...

Whereas I don't think the president has done all he could (and should) do to be more open and promote transparency, the Cafferty link was just funny to me. Who cares if the Dems are not allowing the Reps to participate in healthcare discussions at this point? The Reps don't want to participate, all they want to do is to block and delay. So good for the Dems... finally...

G said...

Allowing Reps into the debate isn't even the issue we're discussing. One of the campaign promises that Obama repeatedly put forth was that all the health care discussions would be broadcast on CSPAN for all to see. Now CSPAN has offered to televise them, but it isn't going to happen. It is absolute hypocrisy on the part of Obama, and now he's being called on it.

Does your lack of concern about it mean that you only care about hypocrisy when it comes from a Republican?