ATTENTION:

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

This message asks each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

A. Two Six-year Senate terms B. Six Two-year House terms C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

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

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.

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.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen 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.

While I agree with most of what you have posted, it will never, ever get passed.

Term limits are set. We have elections every two and six yerars. If you cannot get enough votes to get them out, too bad. What we should do is eliminate the electoral regulations. Let anyone take any amount of money from anyone—but you must publish it within hours. Regulations suck and they do not work.

Eliminate primaries. Especially Open primaries. If you are not interested in participating in the political process, then you should not have a say. Sure, open elections are fine...but it you go back to the smoke filled rooms you will get better candidates. The primary system and current election system was a function of the media getting all worked up—and who benefits the most from the primary system? The people? You are kidding, right? It is was originally the newspapers, then the TV stations and networks, and now it is the 24 month cable election cycle that has us enduring debates 18 months before the election?

State conventions and closed primaries are the best way to pick candidates. It brings the people who have an interest in the politics closer to the candidate. You want access, get involved.

I agree on the pensions, but it will raise issues about all government pensions: Military, teachers, cops, firemen, etc. You are making a classic mistake: Considering Social Security to be a “pension.” It is, and has always been, a safety net for the absolute poorest. Traditional workers either had regular pensions or recently, the 401(k) system (a bigger mistake, in my opinion, than Social Security.)

Eliminate Social Security. Yup—tell everyone over 40 they have to stay in. Everyone over 30 CAN stay in, and everyone under 30 they HAVE to pay into a retirement program of their choosing. It would never pass, but getting rid of that albatross would be the best thing we could do.

The people of this country bitch about the government they have. The root cause of the problem is that we elect men and women that “act” like they are good leaders, but who are not. When there is honest to God talk about putting a person like Donald Trump on a ticket, we have crossed the line from republic to bizarro world.

Much of what is in that email about how quickly amendments have passed is true. There are some additional things we should know and use to advance certain amendments.

As for the numbered points, #1, term limits, I definitely favor a constitutional amendment for that. Although "We the People" can enforce term limits through our elections. Just vote them out. I wrote a big piece on this almost 2 years ago, as the 2010 primaries were looming on the future horizon.

For points #2 through #6 and #8, I favor a single amendment that resolves all of that. It goes like this:

You Represent Us amendment:
Representatives and Senators shall be employees of the State that they represent. Their compensation, salaries and benefits shall be set by the legislature of their state. Representatives and Senators shall be subject to all election laws and laws concerning elected officials and/or legislators of the state they represent.

Generally, I don't like unfunded mandates. But this one thing would solve all the problems you mentioned, plus it would give our representatives a very meaningful reminder (their paycheck) of who they actually represent. The last sentence also means that if your state has recall provisions, those recall procedures could be used for Congressional Representatives and Senators.

I also favor a constitutional amendment that requires 2/3rds super majorities to change tax policies, and requires a balanced budget. That amendment must do both things. We have a "balanced budget" requirement here in Florida, but they just raise taxes and fees to close the deficit gap. We don't want that on a national scale.

Finally, I strongly favor some flavor of "repeal amendment" where a super majority of state legislatures (3/4ths is my preference, though 2/3rds has been floated as well) can overturn a public law, a specific section of the US Code, or a specific section of the Code of Federal Regulations.

The question is how do we get these amendments proposed so that the states can work on ratifying them.

Looking at history, the best way is for the state legislatures to pass resolutions calling for a Constitutional Convention to propose the specific amendment language as an amendment. Not an "open" convention to propose any amendments, but rather, for example, "a convention to propose a term limit amendment limiting Congressional Representatives to twelve years total service." When this has happened in the past, as the total number of states proposing an amendment this way approaches or exceeds the Article 5 requirement, the Congress itself proposes and passes the amendment being requested. Congress doesn't want a convention where they might lose control of the process. They generally avoid that by passing the amendment language being proposed by the states for the convention.

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