Business as usual. Politics as usual. The Federal Government has become an entrenched political class. They have passed laws and implemented regulations that favor the incumbent politician and make politics a matter of power and not service to the nation.

There are five changes to the Constitution that could break this pattern.

TERM LIMITS
The Founders laid out a series of term lengths for our elected representatives which serve to vary the time spent in office between elections. Members of the House serve two years at a time while Senators serve six. The President and Vice President serve a term of four years.

There are no limits on how many terms a member of Congress may serve. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution limits the President to being elected twice, for a total of eight years maximum.

The lack of any term limit has led both Houses of Congress to use seniority as a criteria for selection to important internal posts such as committee chairs. It also allows both bodies to pass laws and promote regulations which make it increasingly difficult for citizens to challenge incumbents for re-election.

In the Senate, Robert Byrd (D-KKK) has served over 50 years. Ted Kennedy (D-Taxachusetts) has served over 46 years. Two more Senators have served over 34 years each.

In the House of Representatives, John Dingell has spent over 56 years and John Conyers over 46 years representing the United Auto Workers in Congress. 14 other Members have spent 34 years or more in the House.

The time has come to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit the terms of members of Congress. The Founders never intended to create a class of politicians for life. Spending those amounts of time in Congress make the office all about being a Member not serving as a Member.

LINE ITEM VETO
The ability of the President to affect the bills that Congress passes is limited. The spending and appropriation bills, in particular, give the President little option but veto or sign.

That is because the leadership in Congress some decades ago discovered that it is far easier to pass one large bill than several small bills. A large bill can hide earmarks, pork, and by its size carries a certain degree of protection from oversight by the voters and the President. A 700 page bill provides a lot of hiding places.

Certainly the President could veto one of these huge bills. But, in most cases that tosses the baby out with the bath water. To prevent a few objectionable items, many necessary, even vital, items would also be vetoed.

The courts have held that most versions of the line item veto are barred constitutionally. We need an amendment to change that. The President should have the legal authority to veto any portion of any bill, and thus send it back to the Congress for reconsideration.

CONGRESSIONAL PAY TIED TO WORK
For many years, Congress has failed to abide by a law which it passed that requires pay be withheld from members who are not present for their duties in Congress. Members run for office, including other offices, are ill and unable to attend, or are off on trips of one sort or another and still receive their pay.

In May 2003 we reported: Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) has missed 162 votes in the House this year – 85 percent of the total.

In 2006 we reported on Lane Evans, congressman from Illinois. He was dying of Parkinson’s and the court was about to appoint a guardian. He missed almost 39% of the votes in that Congress.

Also in that 2006 report, we pointed out four other Congressmen who had missed between 14-23% of the votes because they were running for another office.

The Washington Post has a site where the missed votes for Senators from the 110th Congress are displayed. The top six Senators missed more than 20% of the votes. Five were running for President and the sixth was seriously ill at home.

These examples are the tip of the iceberg. Congress normally works a three day week, and perhaps no more than 120 days a year. For that effort they are paid $174,000 a year. Their perks include staff, offices, transportation and many, many other benefits that most workers can only dream about.

That law should be replaced by an amendment to the Constitution that ties Congressional pay directly to being present in the Capitol.

PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION
The line of succession to the Presidency is currently as follows:

• Vice President
• Speaker of the House
• President pro tempore of the Senate
• Secretary of State
• Secretary of the Treasury

It then goes on through the Cabinet Secretaries.

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution provides for filling vacancies in the Offices of President and Vice President.

Two changes should be made to these provisions. The President pro tempore of the Senate has become an honorific for the most senior Senator. In other words, the fourth in line to the Presidency is a very elderly member of the Senate. In the last ten Congresses, Robert Byrd (D-KKK) has held the post four times, and Strom Thurmond (R-child bride) twice. Ted Stevens (R-bridge to nowhere) is the only other Senator to have held that position during that time.

Either this office should be removed from the line of succession or the office should be assigned by amendment to a Senator for some more compelling reason than being old.

The second change that should be made is to the provision for filling the vacant office of Vice President. It should not be by appointment of the President with the consent of the Senate as Cabinet posts are filled. The Constitution should be amended to fill a vacancy in a manner that ensure that the next Presidential election will be a contest. To that end, a Vice Presidential vacancy ought to be filled by the House majority or minority leader that is from a different political party than the President.

The Constitution originally provided that the Vice President would be the candidate receiving the second highest total of votes in the Electoral College. This amendment would take us back towards the original intent of the Founders and act as a break to political parties reacting in their own self interest and not that of the people in a crisis.

SUNSET FOR TAXES AND FEES
Sunset provisions have been come a popular means of limiting the duration of laws in the last few decades. The fifth and final amendment we propose to the United States Constitution would place such a provision there.

The tax cuts which were enacted during the Bush Administration have a sunset provision. They expire unless re-enacted by Congress.

Rather than trust Congress to do the right thing at some point in the future, a sunset provision for tax and fee increases should be placed into the Constitution. No tax or fee increase can be permanent. Congress must re-enact any such increase. A reasonable sunset limit would be nine years. That would span two Presidential terms so that an increase of necessity can have an effect but it can still expire in a timely manner when a new administration takes office.

We believe these five Constitutional Amendments are necessary to limit the current size and strength of the Federal Government. It does not matter which political party controls Congress or the Presidency. A political class with more similarities than differences has developed and their hold on our government must be broken.

We continue to examine the “earmarks” in the HHS / Labor Appropriations bill. This time, via the Porkbusters’ database, we can sort by amount. You know, the tax dollars squeezed from us, the taxpayers so that our employees, known as Congressmen, can secretly and without accountability fund projects for friends, benefactors, contributors, and such.

As the first item amply demonstrates, it also is not considered inappropriate to give our tax dollars to projects bearing your own name. You can also sort the database by project, thus giving the viewer a nice collection of “earmarks” going to the same place. Yale University, for example, does quite well, especially considering the tuition it charges and the endowment it has.

If these items are not pork, why aren’t they introduced publicly by the Congressman responsible? Why are they so vague in many cases? Who actually is responsible for seeing that our money, yours and mine, is spent properly?

This is just one of the appropriation bills. This same process happens in just about all of them. We just didn’t find out in time or it was hidden much better.

So, here are the top 15 offenders and they are spending $23.5 million of our money:

Related: Here, Piggy! Piggy! August 16, 2006

Heree’s an interesting tale of how our “farm subsidies” hurt other farmers.

BBC

n a landscape scattered with mud houses, donkeys and carts, under the clearest of clear blue skies, Mr Moussa explains how his seven-hectare cotton farm brings in 500,000 CFA a year, helping him care for his three wives and seven children.

At harvest time, cotton buyers negotiate their trucks on these mud tracks, eager to get the cotton, which the Burkinabe people call white gold, to market.

But earning the money he needs to keep his family fed, clothed and in school is getting harder as cotton prices fall.

Three years ago, he got 210 CFA per kilo of cotton.

In the year ahead, he expects to get 165 CFA per kilo.

Mr Moussa sees only one reason for lower cotton prices, namely America’s subsidies to its own cotton farmers.

These have led to oversupply on the world market, and this extra supply is depressing prices.

“In the US, the state helps them, here the state doesn’t help us,” he says.

The House is on record about earmarks, and it is not pretty. Andy Roth at the Club for Growth has the votes, all 19 of them. Louise Slaughter, D-NY 28, voted to kill two of them and to support the spending of seven of them. She did not vote on four of them.

First of all, I thought we paid her to vote. Odds are she would have voted wrong, to support the pork, but not voting is just plain wrong by itself. Here are the votes.

House Vote 190 – Dairy education in Iowa ($229,000)

House Vote 191 – Hydroponic tomato production in Ohio ($180,000)

House Vote 192 – National Grape and Wine Initiative ($100,000)

House Vote 204 – Virginia Science Museum ($250,000)

House Vote 205 – Juniata Locomotive Demonstration ($1,000,000)

House Vote 277 – Swimming pool in Banning, CA ($500,000)

House Vote 278 – “Facilities” in Weirton, West Virginia ($100,000)

House Vote 279 – Multipurpose facility in Yucaipa, California ($500,000)

House Vote 280 – Strand Theater Arts Center in Plattsburgh, New York ($250,000)

House Vote 298 – Mystic Aquarium in New London, Conn. ($1,000,000)

House Vote 299 – The Jason Foundation in Ashburn, VA ($1,000,000)

House Vote 302 – Northwest Manufacturing Initiative ($2,500,000)

House Vote 303 – Lewis Center for Education Research ($4,000,000)

House Vote 304 – Leonard Wood Research Institute ($20,000,000)

House Vote 334 – Arthur Avenue Retail Market ($150,000)

House Vote 335 – Bronx Council for the Arts in Bronx, N.Y. ($300,000)

House Vote 338 – Tourism Development Association in Kentucky ($1,000,000)

Louise voted to kill the two items in bold. The Mystic Aquarium vote was a poke in the eye to Joe Lieberman, I suspect. I don’t understand the vote against the Jason Foundation. It must have to do with its sponsor, because it’s a foundation to prevent teen suicide. Louise is in favor of teen suicide?

The last four, in italics, were the ones she missed out on.

Ask yourself this question. Which of these pork earmarks would you go up to Congresswoman Slaughter and say: “Louise, I want you to vote for this. Spend my money on this.”? Think about it. Heck, the two that even come close for me are the two she voted to kill.

The truth is that none of these items belong in a category called Funded by the Federal Government. They should be funded, maybe, by state and local governments, or by private donations. These aren’t national defense, anti-crime or any other topic that my money and your money should be spent on by Louise Slaughter and her porker friends.

BTW. John “Porkpie” Mutha voted to fund every single one of these projects.

Support the movement to cut the pork from the budget. All the news at the link above.