Here is the first of 3 essays on restraining the government, while not an entirely new idea for this first one, it is sure to get you in the mood for the next two in this series.
Restrain
it!
Let’s
face it, our founding fathers had no idea how big the Federal Government would
get. But how big is too big? Well, I think too big is when you spend
American tax payer dollars on individual businesses who can afford to pay for
themselves, paying for roads for
fiscally irresponsible State governments and having to bribe each other with
pork barrel spending just to get essential laws passed. Are you upset my dear reader, because I am? These actions by politicians are what I call legalized
corruption. It’s a series of accepted
practices done by the government that in many cases are against the law for
private businesses or individuals to do.
So what are we going to do about it?
Well
I have an idea, an idea everyone has on there mind. That idea is term limits. Originally, in writing the Constitution the
founders did not include term limits for any elected official under the belief
that experience in office was essential to being a good representative. Obviously it’s not, for after awhile
representatives become tainted by lobbyists and Washington D.C.
The
benefits to term limits are that it hurts lobbyists. They don’t want to have to lobby a new
representative every few years, they want their political pet. Other advantages are we get fresh new faces
into office with fresh ideas and will power without the chains of the old
system. However, there is a
disadvantage. In a representative’s
final term of office, they are no longer beholden to their constituents on
account of that they are no longer worried about re-election. So there is no actual accountability, aside
from their conscience, the impeachment process and other politicians who vote
the other way. This problem can be
mitigated by just removing the 17th Amendment to make Senators
accountable to their States and people respectively. Remember, the only role Governors play in the
Senatorial process, both past and present, is to appoint a Senator if there is
a vacancy otherwise the State legislators, our representatives at the State
level have full control over the process.
They can even replace or accept the State Governors appointee if they
wished. This also has the advantage of
ending unfunded mandates imposed by the Federal Government on the States. A possible problem with this is that it may
cause lobbyists to begin lobbying State governments more, but that can be
solved by term limits at the State level.
Another
solution is that instead of 2 two year terms for the House of Representatives
we could have 2 three year terms. This
would allow for a higher turn over rate in the house of representative with 1/3
being elected every year which would hinder rouge politicians who no longer
fear the wrath of their constituents.
The only problem is that the lobbyists have one more year of use per
term out of a representative, so it is moderately less effective than 2 two
year terms. Though combining it with the
removal of the 17th Amendment should mitigate this factor.
It
is a balancing act. Too many terms or
too long in office allows for corruption.
Too short a term or not enough time in office and the representative is
less effective at doing their job. Each
reform must have a check and a balance built in to negate any negatives. Just giving term limits to our elected
officials is not enough to stop abuses of power. That’s why I believe the 17th
Amendment must go so as to balance any term limits, however long they may be,
that are imposed on the House of Representatives. With this combination; we can prevent
government corruption, save money on elections and the political games that go
on behind the scenes, and bring down much of the black hole of arbitrary laws
made by these politicians to keep themselves relevant.
The next post in the series takes a different approach to reduce government stupidity.
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