Amazing how much damage these weasels can do in a short amount of time. I’m all for starting a movement to make it illegal for them to be in session from the moment voting starts until the new Congress takes office. What would that take? Would it have to be a Constitutional Amendment? Make the whole Lame Duck thing illegal, because they answer to no one.
Makes me scared to think what Obama will do once he's a lame duck!
It would require a Constitutional amendment to ban Congress from holding a lame duck session. (Congress could limit its sessions to a couple of months a year if it wanted too on its own authority, but it doesn't have the desire to do so, therefore a constitutional amendment would probably be required.)
However, the problem with banning lame duck sessions is that there would need to be a clause allowing for Congress to convene for an emergency session to handle situations such as sneak attacks on the US or other serious crises which could happen during the lame duck session when Congress would not, theoretically, be allowed to meet if lame duck sessions were banned. However, if we allowed the President to summon emergency sessions during the Lame duck period, then the president would soon abuse this privilege by just declaring any insignificant event to be an "emergency" just to call Congress into session and ram controversial legislation through. This would effectively render the ban on lame duck sessions useless. (By the way, this is why I think term limits are also a bad idea, because they can turn an entire congress into a 2yr lame duck session where they do not fear the voters at all).
The best way to get rid of the lame duck problem is to swear the newly elected Congressman in within a few days of the election and kick the old ones out...that way Congress doesn't have enough time to retaliate against the American people during the lame duck session for voting them out. Another thing that needs to be considered is how to ban Congressmen from getting cushy jobs working for lobbyists after they are kicked out.
Just a couple more thoughts on possible constitutional amendments against lame duck sessions. It occurs to me that if you don’t want to shorten the term of the lame duck session and swear the new congressman in immediately, other constitutional amendments could be put in place to stipulate that all laws passed in a lame duck session have a sunset clause of “X” months or until the new Congress meets. Another possibility is to pass an amendment that requires all legislation passed in the lame duck session to be confirmed by the new congress when they convene. I suppose that a constitutional amendment could also ban the Congress from ratifying treaties in the Lame Duck session.
I HATE the liberals and all democRATS. and I don't often use that word or phrase...but when I get angry I do!!!!