Get
Congress Out of
Richard Salbato - 11-25-2009
When the Constitution of the
However,
because of the Seventeenth Amendment that allows direct election of Senators,
and the fact that the house has not grown with the population – 435 Congressmen
for 311,000,000 people or 1 Congressmen for more than 700,000 people, this idea
has gotten out of hand.
Now
when I wrote the 35 ideas for Contract with
Then
I thought about the cost and wondered why we even have this cost. A typical Senator or Congressmen has a $250,000
salary and that is not much but --------- they also get millions for their
expenses, staffs, travel, living in Washington, in short, everything they spend
or can pocket.
Being
in
What
do Senators and Congressmen do in
They
are in closed doors meeting privately with other Senators or Congressmen on how
to buy their vote. They say that if you
vote for this or that, we will give you this or that. That is how a simple bill of 10 or 20 pages
gets to 2000 pages. Not only that but
sometimes if a bill gets passed like Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal
Reserve it was simply added to the Health Care bill, and now Ron Paul will not
even vote for his own bill because it would imply that he approve the Health
Care bill.
How
in the world do we stop all this madness?
I have a radical idea that even I thought was stupid but I cannot get it
out of my mind because the more I think it out the more I think it solves all
the problems in Washington DC. Before I
tell you, let me explain a few changes science has given us and how the world
is changing.
It
was only a few years ago when any company was traveling a great deal to buy
products or sell products. Often
meetings would be held in hotels so that many people could meet together and
make policy decisions for the company.
Much of that is gone now because of the computer, the phone, and live visual
conferences on computers with large screens. Businesses have saved millions of
dollars using modern technologies and have cut down on travel. They have also
cut down on postage because of emails.
The cost of phone calls has drastically been reduced because of new
systems. I remember when I was in business and was the first to have a phone in
a suitcase so that I was still in touch even when not in the office. This was the start of the new science.
That being said, why does
any Senator or Congressman ever have to go to
Radical? I thought so also. However, the more I think about it the more
sense it makes. Let us assume we did
keep the house at 30,000 people per member.
That way I could know my congressman face to face on a personal
basis. It would only take me a few
minutes to get to his office and talk with him.
My congressman represents 13 cities and no one I know has ever met him.
Let
us assume he is a Federal Congressman who never went to
1.
He would have an office in my city.
2.
He would have a phone that was automatically recorded and the tapes kept
forever on our district web site.
3.
He would have an email account that could not be deleted and everything he
wrote or received was kept for all to see on our district web site.
4.
He would have a Video Conference Computer System that would allow him to talk
with other Congressmen and kept forever on our district web site.
5.
He would have a System that allowed him to make speeches on C-Span regarding
bills and kept forever on our district web site.
6.
He would be on our district web site, where all his votes or bill proposals
would be posted and all comments from his voters would be posted.
7.
Now, when my Congressman or Senator (or someone else) would present a bill, it
would be posted on the web site for a minimum of 72 hours for all to see and
comment on. He would vote by email and
it would be verified the same way Pay-Pal is verified. All would see how he voted.
8. Considering
that we also accept the concept of no comprehensive bills as stated in items 17 and 18 below, every item of every bill will
have to be voted on separately even in the Yearly Budget and Military Budget,
we would know for sure all his or her loyalty to the Constitution.
Considering
the above there is no reason for any Congressman or Senator to go to
Congress
has the obligation to finance every department in the chart shown below. Note that the finance for the Department of
Homeland Security has gone down this year. Would you have agreed to that if you
knew it? Note that the Department of Labor
has gone up this year. Would you have
agreed to that if you knew it?
If
you knew that Health and Human Services cost more than the Military, would you
be happy? If you knew that the Treasury
department has the biggest bills and this is the interest on the debt, what
would you think?
How
do we get rid of the problem of SSI? I
know how, but that is another Newsletter.
For now all we need to do is find ways to save America from a debt that
we cannot sustain and may bankrupt America in the next two, three or four
years. Bankrupt, yes! Because when no one will invest in our debt,
we are finished and we do not know when that will be.
I
would eliminate the Departments of National Science, Commerce, Environmental
Protection, International Assistance, Other Independent Agencies, Energy, Housing
and Urban Development, Education, Labor, Transportation, Agriculture and Health
and Human Services. None
of these could not be better run by the states.
Congress
has the power of the money so all they have to do is cut off the funds. Even in the other departments they could cut
off the money to people like the Presidents wife, who spends $10,000,000 on her
staff even though she is not part of the government at all, and the money to
the Czars.
RNC Litmus Test
Tea Party
Americans are giving the Republican National Committee a Litmus test called “Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of
Candidates” and
if they do not fit this test they will not give money. I totally agree with this test and hope all live
up to this. This includes:
(1) Smaller
government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing
bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run
healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing
amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop
surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to
eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care
rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun
ownership
The supporters
of this resolution cite Ronald Reagan in saying that if one supports 8 of the
10 resolution, then they are considered friends, not enemies. Let us
combine these ideas and save
My Contract with
If elected I,
_____________________________ promise and pledge to:
1. Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment. (Explanation below)
2. House member to represent no more than
100,000 citizens. (Explanation below)
3. Eliminate all Federal Departments that
are not allowed in the Constitution. (Explanation below)
4. Eliminate all house and senate
payrolls to members and their staff by the Federal Government and have them
paid by the counties and states. (Explanation below)
5. Make illegal all campaign funding for
any elected office. (Explanation below)
6. Make all government workers Non-Union.
(Explanation below)
7. Make it illegal for businesses to
offer Medical, Retirement, or SSI to employees (Explanation below)
8. Make all taxes equal to all - rich,
poor, young or old without deductions.
(Explanation below)
9. Eliminate all Corporate and Business
taxes. (Explanation below)
10. Eliminate all tax on tax. (Explanation below)
11. Stop all payments and votes to the
United Nations. (Explanation below)
12. Help form a “League of Real
Democratic Nations UDN”. (Explanation below)
13. Repeal all Federal Environmental Laws
regarding Climate Change. (Explanation below)
14. Eliminate the Federal Education and
Energy Departments. (Explanation below)
15. Make sure that no international
treaty be signed without 3/4th approval of congress. (Explanation
below)
16. No money be printed that exceeds
growth of GDP and/or replacement of old bills.
(Explanation below)
17. No comprehensive bill shall be passed
period. Every section should be voted on
separately. (Explanation below)
18. No bill will have unrelated
attachments. (Explanation below)
19. No Government employee will accept
money or perks from anyone whatsoever and for any reason whatsoever. (Explanation below)
20. To eliminate all laws that protects
me from me. (Explanation below)
21. To make all tenure laws illegal -
period. (Explanation below)
22. Sell all Federal Lands to States or
private citizens that are unconstitutional and/or could be used better by
states or citizens. (Explanation below)
23. Bring the Federal budget down to 15%
of GDP and never allow it over again without congressionally declared national
emergency or war. (Explanation below)
24. Enforce Monopoly Laws for unions and
companies. (Explanation below)
25. Eliminate all mandatory classes in
1-12 grades that are not part of basic education. (Explanation below)
26. Eliminate all College mandatory classes
that are not needed for a degree.
(Explanation below)
27. No federal laws should regulate
production, but only interstate and international distribution. (Explanation below)
28. Create and require a tamper proof ID
that proves citizenship for any job, private or government. This
proof shall be a valid Birth Certificate. (Explanation below)
29. Demand that the FBI investigate
entire background of anyone holding a Federal Job of any kind whatsoever. (No explanation needed)
30. Repeal all laws that are not strictly
constitutional to the letter of the law and require all laws to be judged by
the Courts with or without a challenge being made. (Explanation below)
31. To keep our military the greatest in
the world by far. (Explanation below)
32. To encourage all citizens to serve
two years in the military. (Explanation
below)
33. To pass a law requiring all court and
lawyer costs, civil or criminal to be paid entirely by the looser of the case
and no awards be beyond reason.
(Explanation below)
34. To outlaw restrictions to Interstate Health Insurance Competition and
itemized inclusions to each person and not to groups. (No explanation needed)
35. There is no such thing as separation
of Church and State in the Constitution. (No explanation heeded)
I know and understand that we cannot ask
anyone to pledge to all these things, but if we did these things we could get
out of the National Dept right away, improve our personal and States rights,
correct the education system, protect personal rights, and become the power of
the world again.
You might note that drill, drill, drill
is not in this but it will be solved in the other pledges. You might also think this is too drastic for
a pledge, but we are facing national bankruptcy if we do not do drastic things
to turn everything around and quickly.
Explanations
1. Before the Seventeenth Amendment,
Senators were not elected, but appointed by the Legislators of the States. This kept the power in the hands of the
States and eliminated the infusion of money from outside the State to elect
people that could vote on things that had no effect on the State. It also gave the State Legislators the power
to remove a Senator that was not looking out for the State and abusing his
power. It was this Amendment more than
anything else that resulted in the growth of the Federal Government and the
massive Pork Barrel projects. Under this
term limits will not be needed.
2. The founding fathers intended that Representatives of the House be
elected directly by the people and should represent no more than 30,000 people
each. Today we have only 435. If we stuck to the 30,000 people we would
have 10,000 members, because the population has increased by 23 times. That
would be hard to change right away, but we should double it every two years
until we reach at least 100,000 people per Representative. At that point we would really know the
representative and he would be one of us instead of special interest
puppet.
3. There are over 1000 departments and
sub-departments in the Federal Government that are not constitutional and not
needed. In order to get out of the
national debt, that is not sustainable, these have to be closed and closed
forever. Some of these are so stupid you
would not even believe they exist.
4. If the states send members to the
Federal government, the states should have the power in their hands. That means
the power to regulate their pay, the quality and quantity of their staff and
their pay. Who holds the purse holds the
power.
5. Today because of Cable TV and the
internet, any campaign funding for any office is not needed. If I was not up against someone like the New
York Major, who put $100,000,000 of his own money in his campaign, I could just
create a web site, get the required number of signatures and run for office. I
would get free TV coverage, free internet coverage and everyone would know my
views and promises, and I could run against anyone, rich or poor. If I was
running for major, I could go face to face with most people, and have town hall
meetings without money. A Federal
Senator would not be elected and a Federal Representative would only have
100,000 people to reach through the above means. Money and special interests are taken out of
elections.
6. Government workers are paid by tax
payers, but we tax payers have no say in what they are paid. Almost all
government workers belong to only one union and this is the most powerful,
corrupt and un-constitutional organization in the
7. I have no problem with businesses
offering benefits to workers but I have a problem with people not knowing how
much of their money is paid out to these things. For example, if the company
wrote a payroll check and then required us to write a check for our SSI and
give back to them or prove we mailed it, we would know just how much we are
paying. Even as to contributions to
retirement plans, we should actually see the check every week.
As
far as Medical Insurance, I believe it should be illegal for businesses to
offer Medical Insurance. People have no idea what this costs in
lack of wages because of this, and Insurance companies would have to sell directly
to the people, and become more competitive.
I do believe states should require that
everyone have at least Catastrophic Health Insurance, just like they do
Liability Auto Insurance. The reason for
this is that Tax Payers end up paying for people who do not have it.
If businesses could not offer benefits at
all, they could compete with countries like
8. The Constitution says that all people
are equal, rich and poor, black and white, male or female, but the Tax code is
not equal and in fact, does not work. Of
course, what I am promoting is a Flat Tax, but truth is that only the flat tax
is legal. In fact, because of the
progressive tax and the 10,000 pages of loopholes and deductions, some
millionaires pay less tax than I do. A flat tax without any loopholes or
deductions would actually bring in more money from the rich than the system
does now.
9. Is it possible to tax business? No! Let me explain why. Businesses total costs of doing business, add
a profit to their costs and sell at the sum total of cost and profit. A tax is part of the cost of doing business,
so in the end the buyer pays the tax and not the business.
In most cases the buyer is the poor person.
It is not possible to tax a business at all.
Tax the money that people take out of the business but not the
business.
Why is it that the stock market goes up
at a time when everyone is hurting?
Businesses can make money but reducing costs and adding profit to even
inflation or a weaker dollar. Only the
people are harmed and not the companies.
Allow companies to be free from government and they will hire more of
the people who actually do pay taxes.
This is called “Supply Side Economics” and it is the only thing that
works, both for full employment and more taxes.
10.
Tax on taxes is illegal but we do it all the time. When governments
(both Federal and State) tax raw materials, and then tax again the production
of that material into a product, and then tax again the distribution of that
product, and then tax again the sale of that product, they taxed the tax again
and again four times. Under law you
cannot tax tax.
11. We need to get out of the United
Nations, but the first step is to just stop paying for it, and it will
disappear by itself.
12. Cooperation between nations is a good
idea, but we cannot cooperate in any way whatsoever with dictatorships and
governments formed by forced and corrupted elections, and should not. Most of the nations in the UN are not real
democracies and yet have the same vote we do.
I would form a new UN made up of only
free and democratic nations, which would have our economic and military
support- United Democratic Nations.
13. Environmental Laws regarding pollution
of rivers and waterways are good. There
is no evidence whatsoever that CO2 causes any change whatsoever to the
environment and no laws to this effect should be passes. No Federal laws should be passed even on
other environment things unless they affect more than one state.
14. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our
dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget
of $24 billion a year (Billion with a B) and we import more oil than ever
before. The Department of Education
costs more and since established we have gone from number one to last in the
civilized world. Education belongs to
the cities and counties, not to the Fed.
It is not even constitutional, except for Military Colleges.
15.
Treaty approval by 3/4th of the congress is the law but has been
bypassed many times in the past 60 years.
16.
The Federal Reserve (which we should eliminate in time) should not be allowed
to increase the money supply for any reason whatsoever except to keep up with the
growth of the GDP and should reduce it when GDP goes down.
17. The entire concept of a Comprehensive bill is a way of saying
it will have hidden and incomprehensible pork barrel and social programs. There is no logical reason why each section of
any bill, even the defense and budget bills, should not be voted on item by item.
18. It should be a congressional law that
no bill should have unrelated attachments. This is why many socialist things
were not vetoed by President Bush. They were included in the bills to support
the war in
19. This will eliminate most corruption
and allow legitimate special interests to give an argument and not bribes. Today they are forced because if they don’t
others will.
20. There are no laws (not even drug and
alcohol laws) that are constitutionally legal that take away my personal
freedom, unless it effects others. The
reason for government is to protect me from you and you from me, but not me
from me.
21. Why should anyone in any job have
preference over others simply because they have been there longer? Preference should always be given to those
who do more or better work. Under the
present system, if you had no job available, you could not hire Einstein
because everyone else would have tenure.
If Bill Gates worked for you, but he was the newest, and you had to lay
off 10 people, he would have to go.
22.
The Federal Government owns so much useless land,
it could almost pay the National Debt just by selling it off to states and
citizens. It owns the majority of
23.
The Federal Government was never supposed to be over 15% of the GDP and
should be lower than that. In fact, if
we could get it slightly lower than that we could eliminate the Federal Income
tax altogether. If it only did was it
was constitutional allowed to do, it could not go over that amount. Eliminate 1000 departments.
24.
The founding fathers believed in individual and equal freedoms. They knew that any monopoly would violate
freedoms. Mostly they believed that a
monopoly of government was evil, but they also believed that a monopoly of
democracy could be evil, so they divided everything so that no one person or group
of people had too much power. They also
talked about and made laws preventing businesses from having a monopoly on
anything the people needed or wanted. Even the founder of the first union in
25. We are graduating people from High
School who cannot read or write, but they know how to relate to gays. With only twelve year to learn basics there
is no time for more than the basics of education. Most of the basics we should know have been
eliminated, like Geogrophy, American and
Constitutional History, World History, Physics and advanced science.
26. Why should a student of Mechanical
Engineering be required to take a class in Social
Science. We can make 4 year degrees into
3 year degrees just be eliminating the garbage, which are just social
engineering or brainwashing.
27. If I manufacture a gun or a chair and
only sell it in my state, by law I only have to obey state laws, and only then
if they are constitutionally lawful. But the Federal Government only has rights
over interstate
transfer of goods, and even then only if it effect health and
safety.
28.
Illegal Immigration could be reduced by 80% if we would simply make it
impossible for them to get a real job in this county and everyone knows it. If we had this law and enforced it, BO would
not be President right now.
29. No explanation needed.
30. If we eliminated all that governments
do that are not constitutional we would cut government by 70%.
31.
32.
In
33.
Many countries including