SPANKING CONGRESS WITH THE CONSTITUTION—A GOOD OR BAD IDEA?

By Edwin Cooney

I confess: I, too, get frustrated with Congress, but that happens primarily when it passes laws that I regard as endangering your welfare or mine.

Twice in the last month, I’ve been sent an email encouraging passage of a proposed Twenty-eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

My teachers taught me that the Constitution was specifically constructed and established to provide for a new and balanced federal type of government to replace the lack of sound government under the Articles of Confederation. Quoting Patrick Henry’s observation that the Constitution was designed to limit rather than expand the authority of government, the author appears, for his or her own purpose, to deliberately mislead the reader as to the central purpose of our “Founding Fathers.” Certainly the Bill of Rights, passed by Congress in 1790, was indeed designed to enhance the rights of the people under the new Constitution, but it is vitally important that the reader understand what took place first. The Constitution itself was established to “secure the blessings of liberty” along with “the general welfare of all of the people.” Thus, this call to correct the dastardly deeds of Congress contains at the very outset of its appeal misleading historic information. It is neither logical nor instructive to describe the limitations of an historic document without first describing for what purpose it has been established!

There appear to be two purposes for this proposed Twenty-eighth Constitutional Amendment. The first is to eliminate our perpetual national debt. The second appears to be about punishing Congress (meanly and unjustly as I see it) for taking care of its own.

The heart of this proposed congressional fix has to do with congressional privileges --especially in the fields of healthcare, pensions, and pay increases. Thus it proposes seven changes which, it implies, will provide you and me with more honest, efficient and humble Congressmen and women. They are as follows:

(1.) no tenure or pensions -- current and former members will be immediately stripped of all pensions voted under past Congresses;
(2.) all congressional pension and health benefits shall immediately be moved to the social security system and can be used for no other purpose than social security benefits;
(3.) Congressmen and Senators will purchase their own future retirement with their own money;
(4.) Congress shall no longer have the power to raise its own pay -- future pay increases will be tied to the lowest CPI index at 3%;
(5.) Congress, as of January 1, 2012, loses its healthcare system and receives Medicare benefits like the rest of us;
(6.) Congress must abide by all laws it passes to govern the rest of us;
(7.) All previous congressional contracts which were established, not with the public, but for Congress’s own benefit, this author insists, should be null and void as of January 1, 2012.

Now there are some compelling aspects to this proposal. The most compelling is that it could conceivably save a few dollars. Second, it could conceivably change the type of person willing to run for Congress. However, the question is: would that be good or bad? Would fewer benefits attract the rich or the poor?

Part of the appeal for passage of this proposed constitutional amendment is that the original “founding fathers” sought “citizen legislatures.” The author of this email insists that our “founding fathers” only served briefly and then went home to go back to work. That assertion is patently untrue.

The Constitutional Convention was not packed with farmers (unless you call George Washington, James Madison, Edmund Randolph and others “farmers” rather than slave-owning planters). Nor were the Hamiltons, Jays and Shermans day laborers. When they left Congress, many of them went home to serve in the legislature, to run for governor or to become ministers to European courts.

More to the point, our founders, even during the Constitutional Convention (perhaps especially then), saw to it that the rights of the most powerful among them (such as the right to own slaves, to assign their customers to debtor’s prisons, to employ indentured servants, etc.) remained in place for the present.

It’s a good idea to consider the consequences of the types of people who may be attracted or discouraged should this proposed change actually occur.

Consider the following: would the lack of health care benefits attract rich or poor people to run for Congress? If “average citizen” types of people run for Congress, who would financially support their campaigns and to whom would they be subsequently indebted? If Congress were limited to the wealthy who could afford their own health care, what would that mean to your costly health needs and mine? If terms were limited, is it likely or unlikely that senators and representatives would be obliged to leave just as they were becoming familiar with how government really works as well as with the vital aspects of effective public policies?

Of course, Congress needs to be watched and even spanked occasionally, but spanking Congress with the Constitution and for the wrong reason is bound to affect you and me more than it would Congress.

Congress, as the late great humorist Will Rogers once observed, is filled with children who never grew up! If he was right, Congress simply wouldn’t understand the spanking in the first place!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY