Tag: change congress

Don’t Rely on the Altruism of Baby Boomers

Post author By David
Post date February 2, 2010
2 Comments on Don’t Rely on the Altruism of Baby Boomers

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David Brooks must have thought yesterday was April Fools Day – that or he thinks he’s getting old so he decided to pen a column painting a rosy picture for seniors by coming to a senile conclusion. In The Geezers’ Crusade he comes to this wildly impossible conclusion:

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

Tags change congress, health care, KVNU FTP, money, New York Times, Obama, technology, term limits

culture National

Change I Could Believe In

Post author By David
Post date January 26, 2010
12 Comments on Change I Could Believe In

photo credit: jasoneppink

Back in October I wrote about the dangers of a crisis mentality and tried to show that the abuse of crisis was not a one-party trait. I see that Will Wilkinson did a better job of showing that this month in Let the next crisis go to waste:

The Aughts began in crisis when the second plane hit the second tower on Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush administration, loath to let a serious crisis go to waste, managed to parlay the nation’s alarm and credulity into an ill-conceived invasion of an entirely unrelated country, wasting over a trillion dollars and many tens of thousands of lives, all while losing control of the fight in Afghanistan and failing utterly to bring down Osama bin Laden.

Bush’s botched attempts to capitalize on crisis—the ugly aftermath to which Obama is heir—might have made an alert leader wary. But instead, Obama set up shop in the Oval Office and proceeded immediately to use crisis as (Emanuel’s words again) “an opportunity to do things you’d think you could not do.”

Rather than acting as a prudent guardian of the public good in a time of economic turbulence and hardship, Obama and the Democratic Congress have hurried to check the boxes on their partisan wish list precisely when the nation most needed a restorative break from transformative ambition.

Tags change congress, crime, Elevated, government, Haiti, KVNU FTP, Obama, unconstitutional

culture

Political Cultures

photo credit: www.charlietphoto.com

There are two political cultures that we need to change in order to have a healthy “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” in this country. The first is the culture among the voters as defined by how thy perceive those who hold political office. The second is the culture among lawmakers as defined by how they perceive the purpose and role of government.

Our Pit of Dysfunction

I got thinking about these culture issues during a brief discussion with my brother in which he mentioned an ex-politician that now works for the same company as he does whom he described like so:

He’s the kind of guy who leaves you with a sense that not all politicians are scum sucking bottom dwellers. He’s a really great guy.

That is a great example of the voter culture that leaves voters not wanting to participate in politics because the whole process feels dirty. That perception makes you feel that anything more than voting might contaminate you by association and has the added effect of making your vote feel useless anyway.

Among politicians the dysfunctional culture is one that views government as a powerful multi-tool which is adaptable to help deal with whatever problem the nation is facing at the time. The perception that government can be so adaptable is dangerous because it causes an excessive reliance on government (a hammer) so that we use it for tasks it was not meant to address (like cutting aboard and wondering why the edge is all jagged) while overlooking other available tools (any number of saws) that are better suited to many of the challenges we face.

The reality is that neither of those cultural perceptions is correct. Many politicians (possibly even the vast majority although my own experience is too limited to prove that conclusively) on both sides of basically every issue are good people who really do want what they think is best for their constituents and the nation as a whole. That fact may explain why, when confronted with their individual elected leader at whatever level, voters find it easy to send the incumbent back even while holding a very low opinion of the elected body they are sending them to participate in. Because government is not a multi-purpose tool to address a wide variety of problems, even well-meaning people (politicians, lobbyists, voters) trying to use it as such will create at least as many problems as they solve and they will be dissatisfied with the results of all their hard work.

Continue reading “Political Cultures”

Tags change congress, civic participation, discourse, Elevated, legislation, power

General

Eight Ideas for Reform

Kyle Mathews shares eight steps he believes would produce a more functional congress at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. It is an interesting list including ideas I’ve heard before and a few new ideas. There is also some good discussion in the comments. I thought it would be worth sharing here in the order that he presented the ideas.

Resolve the electoral status of D.C.

I’ve made my position on this issue clear in the past. Kyle agrees with me that it is important and that the current legislation is the wrong route.

Limit campaign contributions to those who will be represented in the election.

Again, I’ve already shared my thoughts on that (multiple times) and I agree with this idea. I like the term Kyle uses – electoral carpetbaggery.

Water down the filibuster.

This is one I don’t think I have written about. I agree that the filibuster is overused but I also agree with one of the comments which said that placing a time-limit on filibusters would effectively remove them completely. As one who believes that the filibuster mechanism provides an important check on the system I think I would rather put up with its overuse, than do away with it entirely.

Eliminate anonymous holds.

I had not considered this before either, but as a believer in transparency and accountability I agree that holds should not be anonymous. If I put a hold on a bill I should be willing to admit it and explain my reasons.

Increase the size of both houses.

Once again, I have made my position on this quite clear, and once again I agree. I had never considered increasing the size of the Senate, but the way that he presents it – three senators per state – would be workable and would still allow the Senate to function in the same capacity that it was originally designed to function. I especially like the way the three senators per state idea would give each state a chance to bring a fresh face to the Senate in each cycle.

Increase the capacity and role of the Congressional Research Service.

This was another idea that was new to me, but it sounds like a good one. One comment argues that members of congress only use the CBO information if it benefits them. That argument is fairly weak because whatever hurts one side of the debate will benefit the other so the information will almost always be used. More information is almost never a bad thing for the governing process.

Restructure the committee system.

This is another idea I have never addressed, but I agree that the committee system is broken. Committees tend to turn committee members into industry insiders (if they weren’t already) and thus minimize any objectivity that should exist between government and industry. One other idea I once heard related to this was random committee assignments and regular rotation. I think there are lots of ways the committee system could be altered and most of them would be improvements over the current system.

Make all elections non-partisan.

Once upon a time I might have agreed with this, but I now believe that this would actually make it more difficult for voters to get truly informed about candidates and would further discourage voter participation in the political system. I could be wrong about that, but that is what I would expect to happen.

Out of the eight ideas I had addressed three directly in the past and I agree with six of the ideas in principle – some details would still need to be worked out on some of those. If I had to choose all or nothing I think that making all eight reforms would be a positive change overall in our system despite the drawbacks of the two ideas that I disagree with.

Tags change congress, civic participation, connections, ideas, thoughts, voting

General

Hit Them Where it Hurts

[quote]As Congress finds new and ever more inventive ways to spend money (both real money and imaginary money) more and more voters are waking up to find themselves becoming fiscal conservatives. First off, I must say that there are not nearly enough of us among the voters and secondly I feel compelled to add that we would be in a much better position to be taken seriously if there had been many more converts to the cause while Bush was still in office.

Earlier this week a friend of mine asked for my thoughts on an idea he had to slow and/or reverse the growth in government spending. (I feel compelled to state that said friend was awake to this issue well before Obama was elected – lest anyone mistakenly think that he just woke up to this in the last week.) His idea consists of two parts and boils down to this:

Have states set the wages for their Congressional delegation.

Have each member of Congress pay for 0.00001% of the federal budget out of their own paychecks. (That’s one out of 10 Million dollars for each member of Congress.)

My initial response was to point out the fact that it would take a Constitutional amendment to make the first part legal due to the provisions of Article I Section 6 that their salaries be paid out of the U.S. treasury (not that state money is not already mostly from the U.S. Treasury).

After thinking about the proposal more I recognize that it only works if both parts are enacted because if only the second portion is enacted it would only take about 30 minutes for the House to pass emergency legislation (or simply attach it to that proposal if they want to be efficient) in which the calculation for Congressional salaries is changed from it’s current “$170,000 plus an automatic annual cost of living increase” to “0.000012% of that year’s annual budget plus $169,999.99 plus an automatic annual cost of living increase.”

The real kernel of the idea was to hit Congress in the wallet – where it hurts – for the egregious budgets they pass from year to year like kidney stones in the national economy. For myself I have long believed that we should make congress feel the pain of their overspending by having them be responsible for a portion of their deficit spending – say 3 times whatever portion of their budget is financed by deficits. (In other words, if 15% of the budget is deficit spending then members of Congress lose 45% of their salaries – and probably the same portion of their budget for staffers etc. for the year – to help offset their budget.) This only works if there are no exceptions (“oops, we had an emergency and had to overspend – but our regular spending didn’t include a deficit so we should not pay a penalty.”) On the other hand they should also receive some incentive for wise management by offering a bonus of one tenth of any percentage surplus they run for their personal salaries. (That would be, if 10% of revenues were in excess of the annual budget they would get a 1% bonus on their salary for the year.)

Theoretically this would have the downside of encouraging them to raise taxes to cover their spending priorities thus causing citizens to bear a greater cost for their government. Personally I think that would be beneficial because people would spend less time clamoring for more government handouts because they would almost universally feel the effects of any spending increases. Such a change should also have the side effect of having people be more engaged in the process of removing representatives who ignore them because they would be more likely to feel the effects of whatever votes their elected officials cast.

Tags change congress, connections, deficits, ideas, money, taxes

General

Knowledge – the Key to Sound Government

Post author By David
Post date November 3, 2009
4 Comments on Knowledge – the Key to Sound Government

photo credit: TheAllNewAventuresOfMe

Although I had never heard it before, this quote in Utah Policy really captured the essence of some of what I have been trying to convey in posts and comments on what makes an ideal legislator:

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives”. James Madison

We are supposed to have a popular government (government of and by the people) and it must have popular information (information from the people) if it is to function properly. This is one of the reasons that backroom politics is so undesirable. In this age of hyper-communication every elected official (or even candidate) has the means of acquiring popular information and they must do everything in their power to acquire that information.

Tags change congress, connections, Elevated, liberty, quotes, thoughts

culture National

The Dangers of a Crisis Mentality

Post author By David
Post date October 30, 2009
16 Comments on The Dangers of a Crisis Mentality

photo credit: paparutzi

Soon after the election last year in the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Seib wrote about the opportunity presented by the financial crisis for Barack Obama. Perhaps he was simply reacting to Rahm Emanuel’s statement that, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Seib summed up that perspective on crisis by saying that:

The thing about a crisis is that it creates a sense of urgency. Actions that once appeared optional suddenly seem essential.

That really captures the essence of a crisis mentality. Unfortunately it only looks at the silver lining while ignoring the cloud in front of it. The assumption is that we all can see the dangers of the crisis cloud. Unfortunately the only part of the crisis cloud that most people see is the front side – the possibility with any crisis that we will fail. The problem is that right in front of the silver lining he spoke of there is the hidden backside of the crisis cloud which we conveniently forget.

Because of the sense of urgency that tends to accompany a crisis we not only begin to view once optional courses of action as essential, in many cases we go beyond that and begin to view once forbidden courses of action as excusable.

Tags change congress, Elevated, government, health care, issues, liberty, Obama, unconstitutional, Wall Street Journal

culture National State

Senator Jim DeMint on Term Limits

Post author By David
Post date October 23, 2009
7 Comments on Senator Jim DeMint on Term Limits

I started a discussion on term limits a couple of years ago on this site and between what I said then and what I have said on other sites I think my position on term limits is fairly clear – I believe that term limits generally produce benefits that far outweigh the drawbacks that opponents will cite. I think solid evidence of that is that not one state (out of 15) that has enacted a term limit law and had it start limiting terms has ever repealed their term limit law. (Six states did enact laws and then repeal them before they took effect – including Utah.) Coming from that position, I was happy to hear the announcement from Senator Jim DeMint that he plans to introduce a term limits amendment soon.

While I have some questions about some of the specifics of what he plans to propose like how he decided that three terms would be the appropriate limit for members of the House or how flexible he would be on the particular limits he is proposing, I found one statement that he made very insightful about the last time that term limits were seriously pursued by the political class.

Fifteen years ago, Republicans – who had been out of power in Congress for forty years – made term limits a centerpiece of their “Contract with America” agenda.

The term limits constitutional amendment ultimately failed, in part because so many new reform-minded congressmen imposed term limits on themselves. After six or eight years, these members voluntarily went home, leaving behind those Republicans and Democrats who fully intended to make a career inside the beltway.

The fact is, party doesn’t matter when it comes to reform. If you want to change the policies, you have to change the process.

He’s absolutely right that no significant reform will come in how Washington operates until we make structural changes that force it to operate differently. His comment that many of those who wanted to enact term limits voluntarily term-limited themselves – thus crippling the attempt by leaving it in the hands of those who had no interested in being term limited was insightful. I realized that anyone who wants to make such a change would have to take the attitude and make a pledge to stay in Washington as long as possible until they either got term limits enacted or else until they no longer believed that term limits were worth pursuing. Those who will impose their own limits independent of everybody else will limit their own comparative effectiveness by granting more power to those who do not believe in their ideals (specifically the ideal of having term limits).

Tags amendments, campaign promises, change congress, Constitution, ideals, issues, Jim DeMint, term limits, Utah

General

Legislator as Fundraiser

When it comes to raising money to run a campaign an ideal legislator needs to understand the real value of money in politics. They need to accept that a serious campaign will require more money than they can personally supply (unless they have significant personal wealth). They need to be comfortable asking people to support them financially – that requires not only being comfortable making the request, but also confident in the message they are promoting in their campaign. On the other hand, an ideal legislator should never fall into the trap of thinking that money can overcome the absolute necessity for them to be putting in hard work on the ground making their case among the people who will be casting their votes.

Here is where I know some people will disagree with me. I contend that a campaign even for federal offices can be financed entirely through personal donations by people residing within the jurisdiction of the office being sought. Contributions from businesses should be refused. Businesses and industries that are part of the district for the office being sought should make any desired contributions through the individuals within those companies. Money from Political Action Committees should not be given to specific candidates. Committees that wish to help a candidate should spend their own money in whatever way they feel will best help the candidate without the candidate ever receiving any money from them. “Abc PAC” can endorse a candidate, can buy booths saying they support that candidate, can make and distribute literature and other advertising materials for the candidate, but should not write a check to the candidate. Anything they produce should never have the candidate saying that they approved the message – in other words, the PAC and the candidate should be independent of each other with full right to voice their support of the efforts of the other.

Personally I would prefer that a candidate never run a campaign on debt although I am not ready to say that I could never support a candidate that uses debt to help finance their campaign. I would say that no good candidate should ever carry debt from one campaign to another. If they have not paid off their expenses from a previous campaign (for the same office or another office) they should not be running a new campaign.

I know that there are people who would argue that this ideal is not feasible in our current political environment and I am open to thoughts on what can and should be done, but please don’t just shoot down my ideal without explaining why we should not desire it.

Tags campaign promises, campaigns, change congress, ideal, money

General

Re-Founding Requires Renewed Statesmanship

Post author By David
Post date September 30, 2009
6 Comments on Re-Founding Requires Renewed Statesmanship

photo credit: mharrsch

Bob Henline strikes again, but this time there is nothing he said that I would argue with.

. . . all we end up doing is enacting more ridiculous laws that only spin the problems, never really resulting in any tangible effects. That leads us to ask the question of why this is the case?

The short answer to this question is that we lack anything resembling long-term thinking in this country. Our politicians have shelf-lives of 2, 4, or 6 years and our general public has an attention spam of about 12 seconds. This situation doesn’t lend itself well to long-term solutions, but it does lead to amazing long-term problems. Over the course of the past 50 years or so we have done an amazing job of creating problems and of pushing them off onto future generations. The problem that we now face is that we are the future generation that is stuck with the tab.

Tags change congress, connections, Elevated, liberty, patriotism, statesmanship