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Forum Post: We need a goal for our protester: To Fix Our Current Congress

Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 31, 2011, 9:10 a.m. EST by FixCongressNow (0)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, e-mail, and cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

  1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

  2. Congress (past, present& future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. (Congress has a different (CRS - Congress Retirement System) retire than Social Security so they rob SS funds and don't care what happens to SS FUNDS). (They borrowed against SS Funds for their deficit spending, that's why SS is bankrupt).

  3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

  4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

  5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the Same health care system as the American people. (Congress gave us Obama-Care but they have a different plan (better plan) for themselves)

  6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. (The members of Congress are not above the law).

  7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.

10 Comments

10 Comments


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[-] 1 points by WeWillWin365 (3) 12 years ago

Great post!! Thanks for the suggestions. Check this out as well, I read this as a recommendation from this forum and am glad I did.

The title is Wildfire: The Legislation that Ignited the Great Recession.

Should be titled: The List of Criminals That Stole Our Money and How They Did It!

[-] 1 points by nucleus (3291) 12 years ago

Congress cannot by be fixed because it already is.

[-] 1 points by EdmondSeymore (101) 12 years ago

These ideas should be included in the plan to implement the objectives in my opinion.

[-] 1 points by The1Capitalist (26) 12 years ago

This sounds like a Tea Party message

[-] 1 points by Teacher (469) 12 years ago

Its a common sense message. The Tea Party and OWS are part of the same thing, if you think about it.

[-] 1 points by Falcus (81) 12 years ago

I like the sentiment here, but what about the current culture of civic apathy? The people here are mostly here because they care some little bit to read about this, but those that aren't have, to the best of my knowledge, mostly chosen to ignore things. If we all tell 20 people, and on average only 2/per decide to do anything, is that really going to be enough public pressure to bring this about? Demonstrations, particularly non-sanctioned Demonstrations at least have the benefit of getting news cycles, but if civic duty in todays culture only required spreading of good ideas, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place...... I say these things in an effort to pose an indirect question. Ive been reading alot of awsome ideas people have been having.... Now, how do we accomplish them? I have yet to see someone answer that......

[-] 1 points by ARod1993 (2420) 12 years ago

If we want people to vote for change, we're pretty much gonna have to wrap it up in a pretty pink bow and hand it to them on a silver platter. That's a pretty tall order, but it shouldn't be impossible if we take advantage of the 2012 election cycle. See this link for a more specific plan of action: http://occupywallst.org/forum/we-want-change-thats-great-now-how-do-we-implement/#comment-205283

[-] 1 points by Falcus (81) 12 years ago

My only worry there is the same worry Ive had every other election cycle we've lived through.... How do you cut through 50 years of accumulated Civic Apathy? If you want an Arab Spring in America, as you mentioned in the post it can't be violent. You have to fight them by going to them and passively refusing their advances to placate you. The difference here is that Most Americans will enjoy watching a few dozen cooks escorted out of the capital building vs the horror experienced when a few dozen of a few hundred Square Squatters are killed with Live ammunition. You need Organization on a level thats unheard of before in American civics.... We have the technology, but can you build it better? Can any of us here use the tools we have, that the Arab Springers had, in the American setting, to passively confront the American issues that are plaguing us, and believe it or not, the world?

For all our sakes, I hope somebody does.... Im just not convinced its OWS, yet....

[-] 0 points by sdcheung (76) 12 years ago

The Current system is fakked, can't be fixed.

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