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.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Another blogger, blogging in the local media, asked me in an e-mail what the tag line for this blog was all about. Supporting the Ninth Amendment?

The Bill of Rights was added when it became clear that a number of the original 13 states were not going to approve the Constitution without a clear statement of the limits of the Federal Government. As you read those first ten amendments, note how often they restrict the government. The restrictions are valid for our time, but they spell out the concerns that the writers had at that time. They has just fought a terrible war to obtain their independence from a national government that did many things that our founders found unjust and a violation of the rights of the people. In limiting their new national government, they called special attention to those areas where the English had been oppressive.

The entire premise of the Bill of Rights is spelled out in the Ninth Amendment. You have rights which exist independent of government. The government does not give you rights. You do not earn them. You do not inherit them. They are yours by reason of your existence.

The rights that the Bill of Rights address are not all the rights which you have. You have rights that are not spelled out in the Constitution. The notion exists that if it is not pronounced a right in the Constitution, it does not exist. That is not what the document says.

In a perfect world, most of the laws that the Congress passes would be tossed out as violating one or more of these existing but unwritten rights. The Constitution was intended to limit the national government.

I want to limit the national government. I support the Ninth Amendment.

UPDATE: Richard Brookhiser seems to agree with me over at the Corner.

The Constitutional Convention that gave the United States its framework document opened after a delay on May 25, 1787. The final draft was signed September 17, 1787, four months later. It was ratified June 21, 1788, by New Hampshire which gave it the necessary number of states to take effect. The first ten amendments, our Bill of Rights, was not even added to the Constitution until December 1791, three years after the Constitution itself was ratified.

Their great debates involved the issues of the time:

• balancing the rights of the large, populous states with the smaller, less populous ones
• slavery, for census purposes, for tax purposes, and, in the end, the abolishment of importation
• the right of suffrage, for freeholders or for all men
• citizenship for immigrants

And there was much more. Here are a few resources:

Timeline

Debates by date [use the time line to locate specific debates]

U.S. Constitution Online

Contemporary Writings

Now that I have you thinking, let’s talk about Iraq. Here is a nation that for over thirty years was ruled by a criminal clique, and which suffered every sort of despotism. The thugs who ran the country used all of the natural divisions, language, nationality, religion, economic status, to divide and rule the people of Iraq. They have no recent history of self-rule. To a great extent, all they know is what they’ve heard from their masters, and those who would assume the place of their former masters.

The Iraqis agreed to write a new constitution in the period May 4 through August 22. That’s at least two weeks less than it took the United States. They, too, have their issues. The document that they arrive at may only be as perfect as our original one was. Remember, the Bill of Rights came later for us. It’s already in the Iraqi draft. They’re working hard, with much more limited resources and experience than our Founding Fathers had.

Our Constitution begins:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Note that our goal was a more perfect Union, not perfection. Let’s hold the Iraqis to that standard, and no more. Let’s hold them to the standard that Franklin, Madison and Washington were held to.

While reading through the various NRO blogs [note to NRO, overkill, people, overkill!] I came across a curious turn of phrase that I have seen in a number of other conservative writings. That notion is that it is “invention” if a court discerns a right that is not enumerated in the United States Constitution. That is so wrong that my mind is boggling as you read this. A boggling tsunami, if you will.

The Bill of Rights very clearly states that a variety of rights exist that are not described in the Constitution. That would be the oft ignored yet still in effect Article Nine:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The problem with the courts, IMHO, is that they limit our rights far too often, not that they discover new ones. The social conservatives moan about the right to privacy, a derived right not an enumerated one. Well, think about it in any other context but abortion. Do you really think that the government ought to be able to obtain Rush Limbaugh’s medical records? Or that the government should have the ability to limit what you and your wife do in your own bedroom? Give it a little more thought, folks, before you start opining.

The problem with our constitution, with our country, is that it is predicated on a set of assumptions that should, but no longer apply. Our founders thought that the federal system would be limited, to allow the states to work together and benefit from a union. They never imagined that the issue of sodomy would ever come before a Federal court, nor the ability of a twelve year old to receive an abortion. I can guess that they would have seen both as wrong, but since they didn’t anticipate these issues, we are working within the Constitution that they left us.

They left us the document that they did to correct the major problems with national government of their time. Anything not explicit in the original Constitution or the Bill of Rights, I feel safe in saying, they took for granted.

So should we. I often joke that Americans are different than Europeans. Here, anything that is not specifically forbidden is allowed. There, anything not specifically allowed is forbidden. The social right and the social left find that point of view hard to swallow. The social right thinks that government should prevent us from being bad. The social left thinks that the government should make us be good. Neither perspective is part of the Constitution, and should never be.

We’re far too free for both the social right and the social left. Let’s stay that way. Let’s have our courts continue to discern new freedoms and forbid further restrictions. That’s the American way.

Here’s some short points to remember as the confirmation process for Judge Roberts goes on.

You have a great many rights that are not named in the Constitution.

One of them is a right to privacy. The government has no business in your personal life.

That is NOT a right to an abortion. It is merely the conclusion that the federal government has no business in your doctor’s examining room.

The Constitution restricts the federal government. States and localities may do things that the federal government is prevented from doing.

Not everything is a federal issue.

Your rights, explicit or not, have limits. Most of those limits are at the point where they affect another person.

The Senate of the United States is not the House of Lords. Though they seem to believe such. They are your employees, paid by your tax dollars.

Americans are far more free than we have been led to believe. That misconception serves the purposes of those who seek to limit our freedoms.

People commit crimes by their own choice. People make mistakes by their own choice. People are bigoted by their own choice. Your path through life is defined by the choices that you make.

The word “government” does not appear anywhere in the preceding paragraph.