John / Billybob
A minor quibble, but one of the conventions for the use of abbreviations is that they usually agree with the first letter of the the word that they represent.
Other than that, this essay is absolutely outstanding. IMHO, the Tea Party movement can rally behind your proposals for a balanced budget amendment, line item veto and single-subject requirement. May I also suggest adding term limits?
A very interesting concept, thanks.
We really need to target our energies on the most workable and do-able solutions and this may be better than hoping for the GOP to achieve and hold a majority. And to hope they will actually adhere to their principles if they did.
Doing those things would be fantastic, but politicians would probably find a way around them.
How about using the equal protection under the law clause to sue the Feds against taxing different state’s citizens at different rates?
If citizens from one state send $1.00 in taxes to D.C. and only get back $.73, while citizens from another state send $1.00 in taxes and get back $4.73, aren’t the income tax laws being applied unequally? If we tax the citizens of the states whose Reps and Senators are “bringing home the goodies” at a higher rate equal to the goodies they bring home, those citizens will either start electing people who are frugal or move to a state where the elected officials are frugal with the peoples money.
Another way to achieve the same effect is to ban riders to other bills. Let each bill stand or fall on it's own merit. Then politicians won't have to vote for or against a bill based not upon the merit of the core bill but upon what has been attached to it.
The argument against this is that it'd take so much longer to vote on all the individual bills but I very much doubt that because most of the delay is the haggling over what is attached and counter attached to various bills. Plus, there are plenty of items that only get passed because they're attached to something else such as a military appropriations bill (for example). But if politicians didn't have the "cover" of saying they voted for something because of the other attachments or they voted against something desirable because of attachments then their true records would become clear. (which is, of course, why they would never go for this).
There is a better fix than this one, which becomes a procedural nightmare when it comes to arguing what is contiguous and what is not. It is to invest in the Speaker and the President of the Senate the power to divide bills into pieces (I call it a "caedo" from the Latin root "caedere," "to cut off or divide" as with a sword), thus separating contentious elements from those upon which all are generally agreed. The process allows the Presidential veto to be much more discriminating. The beauty of this idea is that it is doable as a rule change, not requiring a Constitutional Amendment.
If you're in the business of suggesting amendments, why not fix the Supremacy clause as regards treaties and the Article II provision for ratification instead? Those are much more critical changes than what you are proposing here.
How do we solve the problem of gerrymandering?
Bump