Posted by
tenurecorrupts.com on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 2:16:05 PM
AMERICA'S FIRST PRIORITY - CONGRESSIONAL TERM LIMITS
Why should Congressional Term Limits should be America's first priority?
In all the hurly-burly of present day Congressional politics, doesn't
it occur to anyone that there is no judicious, forward-thinking
legislating going on? Each issue that comes up is tackled on a
political, hysterical, poll-driven basis, and seldom addressed with any
real intent to solve problems with hard-headed commonsense solutions.
In other words, it is mostly "Don't just stand there! Do something!
Anything! Just look like you're doing Something!" (and especially don't
let the other side win on any issue!)
This is the mode of our current-day 'permanently re-elected' Congress,
whose ongoing chief pre-occupation is getting reelected, which they do
with a 99% success rate. Pretty good for stumblebums, eh?
Even when one party or the other does have a 'good' solution, the
opposite party votes against it, or amends it into uselessness, for
fear that the sponsoring party might earn some credit in the next
(re)election for doing something good.
Politics! The bane of our existence! (Yeah, but it's still better than tyranny!)
We can't stop political shenanigans completely, but we can sharply
reduce its wicked tendencies by enacting Congressional Term Limits. A
large part of the evils of politics is brought about by the addiction
of career politicians to the reelection process.
As soon as they are first elected to any office, careerist politicians
become consumed with plans to get reelected. From that time on, all
their moves and deals and pronouncements are related to how it will
affect their reelection chances.
Take for example the following list of issues which, if tackled with
the best intentions for the country, and not for either party's
benefit, and nor for any special interest's benefit, would most likely
be solved by a 'citizen Congress', but will never be effectively solved
by our current 'permanently' reelected careerist Congress:
Social Security reform with universal mandatory PRAs (including those on welfare)
Means-tested medical Rx drug plans
Mandatory medical savings plans
Universal school choice for competitive schooling
Immigration reform including border control, assimilation requirements/incentives
Computer-based neutral redistricting w/o human interference
Fraud-proof nationwide voting, including purged voter rolls
Regulation-free political financing with instant online disclosure
De-regulation of energy: exploration, drilling, refining, nuclear power.
Transparent budgetary process
Every one of the above issues facing the country, and more, would be
more equitably and intelligently debated, resolved, and passed, if we
had a term limited 'citizen congress' working on the job.
And lastly, but certainly not least, we will never get Congressional
Term Limits passed, and a 'citizen Congress' installed, while the
Congress is dominated by careerist professional politicians who think
it is their God-given right to hold a seat in Congress in perpetuity!
This, in spite of the fact that Americans are passing term limits for
local and state officeholders all across the country. Why not for Congress?
This simply means that, of all the issues facing the country today,
none is more important than placing a Congressional Term Limits
Amendment at the top of our own citizen agenda, and getting it passed.
Stop and think. Every single other issue is unlikely to be effectively
resolved, unless we have a large contingent of fresh, non-careerist
legislators in the Congress who realize that they are only there
temporarily, to do a job for the country, not to work for reelection.
And we won't get those fresh legislators until we force out the career
politicians who win reelection 99% of the time.
It is time to stop reelecting incumbents! It is time to vote out incumbents! (both good and bad!).
It is time to give citizen legislators a chance!
It is past time for a Congressional Term Limits Amendment!
I'm Nelson Lee Walker, Saratoga, CA
tenurecorrupts.com