Let’s face it, our political system is a mess. It’s full of a bunch of folks (on both sides) who cater to special interest groups and donors.
As I see it, there are two major solutions that would be simple, but would require massive public outcry to enact.
1) Term Limits for Congress: There are men and women in congress (on both sides of the isle), who have been their for their whole life. People who are disconnected with the reality of the private sector and non-public jobs which they are creating policy for. The house should be limited to a maximum of 4 terms or 8 years and the senate should be limited to a maximum of 2 terms or 12 years. Someone could be in the house and then the senate for over 20 years in this scenario, that doesn’t seem limited, until you look at McCain, Kerry, Lieberman, and others whom have served for for longer than I have been alive! (29+ years)
Having term limits would require those individuals to focus their time in office and not focus on just the next election cycle. If term limits are good enough for the President, they should be good enough for the congress.
2) Limited Contributions: Political campaigns are out of control with the amount of money they spend. It’s all about the Benjamin and it’s insanity (on both sides). We should get drastic with this and force politicians to operate their campaigns on limited budgets. Let’s limited personal and corporate contributions to $100. Force campaigners to really hit the streets with grass roots efforts and stop with the massive donations from special interest groups.
Clearly there is a lot more that can be done, but I think the combination of term limits and limited campaign contributions would go a LONG way towards changing the way our political system operates. Oh, and abolishing the current tax code, but that’s for another post.
Congress loves adding regulations to businesses, it’s time someone added some regulation for them.