Reno Hayek Symposium

Perhaps you’ve seen the email recently circulating. No, that’s not an exclamation from a porn movie, but the excitement I would imagine is about the same. It is subtitled, “HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS,” in an effort to promote a “Congressional Reform Act of 2009.” After discounting ye of little faith who say this would be impossible, and merely tilting at windmills, the email sets out the salient features:

• Term Limits: 12 years, both House and Senate.
• No Pensions: Pay while in office but no retirement plan.
• Social Security Only: Congress’ retirement fund moved to Social Security.
• Prohibits Congress voting pay increases which are set at lower of CPI or 3%.
• Congress gets no special health care system, but only what all citizens get.

Reading this brought to mind the 1994 Contract with America. This Republican effort by Newt Gingrich and some young Congressional reformers had similar popular appeal:

• require laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress;
• select an independent accounting firm to audit Congress for waste, fraud, and abuse;
• cut the number of House committees, cut staff by one-third;
• limit the terms of committee chairs;
• ban casting proxy votes in committee and require that meetings be public;
• require a three-fifths majority vote to pas a tax increase;
• and implement zero-based budgeting for the Federal Budget.

As history shows while most of these points got past the House they died in the Senate. And that points up the difficulty with YES, YES, YES. Congressional action requires passage by both chambers and the signature of the president. Even then, such action can be amended or repealed by the next Congress. So, to be effective significant changes in the way the government operates must be accomplished by constitutional amendment.

The amendment process is cumbersome, as it should be. There two routes for proposal: constitutional convention of the states which was never used, or proposal by Congress with a 2/3 majority in both chambers. Then the proposed amendment requires ratification by 3/4 of the states, either by state convention (used once) or by the state legislatures (used all other times).

So, what we need is a new contract with America but one that commits to propose select constitutional amendments. It would be well to limit the number of these to say, term limits and equal applicability of the laws to Congress and citizens.

As to the House and Senate rules of operation, committees, seniority and the like, these can by custom be changed by the respective chamber only. Some would argue that custom has the force of common law.

There’s no question that reform in Congress and the government in general is needed. It’s worth the tilting at windmills efforts required. And, there is never a better time than now when the voters have been exposed to the ugly processes being foisted on us by the Democratically controlled Congress.

Tom Motherway