The Proposed Congressional Reform Act Of 2011 ....Or How To Fix A Dysfunctional Organization

Today's post is based on an email that has been floating around the Net for a little while that supposedly is the brain child of Warren Buffet. It proposes the "Congressional Reform Act of 2011" and sets forth a series of steps that are needed to fix the dysfunctionality that has infected our political processes, with a focus on Congress.

Such an effort is sorely required if you consider the  current state of Congress and the people that reside within it:

1. Public opinion polls show Congress with record low approval ratings, with many polls showing single digit (less than 10%) favorability results.
2. The major issues facing the country, e.g. failing public schools, lost war on drugs, lack of a national energy policy, high national debt, escalating health care costs, etc. have been with us for decades, through many different sessions of Congress, but are nowhere close to being resolved.
3. Our political class has run up $15 TRILLION worth of national debt with nothing to show for it, putting the nation's future financial solvency at risk.
4. Members of Congress often use insider government information to improve their personal financial status and wealth, a clear ethical problem, if not a legal problem.
5. Members of Congress often participate in company IPO offerings, offerings that are not available to ordinary Americans, to improve their financial status and wealth, a clear ethical problem if not a legal problem, and possibly using this access to IPOs to unduly influence legislation.
6. Members of Congress control their Congressional compensation and benefit packages, independent of the quality of their performance, which has been very low for years.
7. Once elected, Washington politicians leverage their Congressional office via earmarks, Congressional district gerrymandering, monetary and legislative favors to campaign donors, etc. to help ensure their reelection regardless of their performance.

What a disgraceful situation. Is it any surprise the nation is in such dire straits?

Which gets us to the Congressional reform Act of 2011 email. Obviously, with only a handful of days left in 2011, Congress will not get reformed in 2011. However, that does not mean we should not push forward to fix the malignancy that is Washington. The alternative, retaining the status quo, is not acceptable to our nation's financial solvency, our personal freedom, and the future of our kids and grandkids.

What is amazing about the proposed reformation of Congress is that all of the steps are totally consistent with the spirit and individual steps described in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government."  Thus, not only will we review the proposed Warren Buffet steps to reform Congress but we will overlay the steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" to get a slightly different and more detailed description of what is needed to finally fix Washington.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011/"Love My Country, Loathe My  Government" Overlay

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office.

Step 9 (from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government) - All current and past members of Congress will immediately lose access to either their government pension or their government 401K-like government savings program, the choice being theirs.

 2. Congressional members (past, present, and future) participate in Social Security.

There is no equivalent step in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" since Congressional members already participate in the Social Security program and have done so for decades. This oversight of the email would lend credence to the view that this list of reformation did not originate with Warren Buffet. I assume he is smart enough, or has advisors are smart enough, to realize that Congressional members are already in the Social Security System. If this had not been not the case, it certainly would have been a prominent step in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government."

3. 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.

This step would certainly help improve the lousy financial status of Social Security, an additional influx of funds. However, Steps 10, 11, and 12 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would go much further to improving the financials of the system. These steps include raising the retirement age to 70 (with a hardship exemption), uncapping the amount of income that is subject to the Social Security tax while reducing the size of the tax percentage, and forbidding an American with total wealth of over $3 million of ever receiving a Social Security check.

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

See Step 9 above.

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

Step 37 - Base pay increases for Congressional members on an annual customer satisfaction rating, and repeal the current practice of automatically increasing Congressional pay without a vote.

Same idea but a slightly different with, the "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" taking a more aggressive stance on Congressional pay. In Step 37, there is no automatic pay raise of any type, Congressional members have to earn a raise.

Step 41 - Prohibit any Senator, President, or Congressman/woman, whose net worth, not income, is over $3 million from drawing a pay check during their term of office, for the good of the country. Not only does "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" want our Federal politicians to earn their raises under Step 37, it also forbids the many multimillionaires in office from even drawing a paycheck.

Those can afford to serve without being paid, e.g Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, should do so for the love of country, not for the salary that would be a very, very small piece of their overall wealth. With a $15 TRILLION national debt, the nation needs to conserve all the wealth it can.

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

There is not explicit step in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" that lines up exactly with this reformation step. However, Step 26 outlines a process for addressing and fixing the problem of our ever escalating high health care costs, something that Obama Care will utterly fail to do. A part of such a process would be to make sure that any solution from Step 26 also applies equally to Congressional members, past, present, and future the same way it will apply to ordinary American citizens.

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

Step 45 - Hold the political class  accountable to the same laws, regulations, penalties, fines, and principles required by the rest of America as it applies to sex/race affirmative action quotas and behavior.

Since the personal profile of Congress currently, and for a long time, has consisted mostly of older white men, Congress is obviously out of sync with the sexual, and racial profile of the rest of the country. This is inconsistent with the goals and objectives of Federal affirmative action laws, laws that Congress passed but from which it exempted itself.

However, there are other laws that should also have been included in Step 45. Congressional members should also not be exempt from insider trading laws, an exemption that they use to trade on insider government information and to participate in corporate IPOs, opportunities that are not available to most regular Americans.

Congressional members should also not be exempt from whistleblower laws, an exemption that protects potential shady and criminal activities of politicians. The word "exemption" and Congressional members/political class should never appear in the same sentences in any matter including affirmative action, insider trading, whistleblower, etc.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women 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.

All of the steps discussed above from "Love my Country, Loathe My Government" apply to this last reformation step. However, the Congressional Reformation Act of 2011 missed out on a few more important steps that are needed to finally get an effective, non-corrupt, and working political class and Congress:

Step 6 - Allow only individual citizens to contribute to political campaigns. This eliminates the contributions of PACs, unions, corporations, and lobbyists. The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech for individual citizens, not groups of citizens.

Step 7 - Only allow individuals to contribute to Senate or Congressional candidates that represent them. For example, political contributions from Kansas citizens cannot be funneled/diverted to political activities in New Jersey.

Step 8 - Strengthen the FEC rules and penalties and staff the Commission with seasoned prosecutors, elected on a national basis, so that someone actually goes to jail once in a while for violating campaign finance laws.

Step 14 - Stop configuring Congressional districts to almost guarantee the reelection of incumbents, i.e. stop gerrymandering.

Step 34 - Hold Congressional committees and subcommittees accountable for their respective areas of responsibility and remove committee members from their committee posts if they do not meet minimal performance criteria.

Step 39 - Restrict all U.S.Senators to one six year term and House of representatives to one four year term or two two year terms.

The so-called "Congressional Reformation Act Of 2011" contains some good first steps. But additional steps, as listed above, from "Love My Country, Loathe my Government" are also needed to really take the "dys" out of dysfunctional. We cannot wait for the political class to reform Congress.

If our politicians wanted to reform the dysfunctional process, they would have done so already. Failure to do so on our part will make our nation's future a disaster, a disgrace, and an extreme disappointment to future generations.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/