Presidential Powers
Check out the Constitution on this and then go back to where congress gets to weigh in. (D’ uh). Also abolish the Electoral College. Popular vote period to elect the President.
Congress
Promote a balanced budget amendment to eliminate the option to borrow. If you don’t have the money then you can’t spend it. Create a requirement that any bills presented to the floor of the congress may only have amendments or request for appropriation relevant to that bill included. No more hidden pork or controversial amendments to promote something un popular in a popular bill. Term Limits. See previous Post. A ban on raiding the Social Security trust fund. We would not have a crisis if congress had not stolen all the money we baby boomers paid into it to cover our retirements. A 10 year ban for former members of the government on going to work for a company that would benefit from a government contract or joining a lobbying firm
Supreme Court
Create a constitutional amendment to limit terms of service to 10 years. This would restrict Stacking the court with relatively young jurists who will be there for 30 years to continue a politcal agenda long after that agenda has gone out of favor.
Strong National defense
Now I pose this question. What corporation would have five bureaucracies with five training programs and five procurement departments to do essentially the same job? Welcome to the Pentagon. So I would propose this, Create a unified command structure to govern the military services which should allow a serious reduction in management costs and co-ordination. Create a unified training program. As recruits go through it they could be assessed as to level of skill and assigned accordingly so that the elite members would become what are now Special opps like Seals, rangers, etc supported by units of rapid deployment not unlike Marines are now. Those with an aptitude for flying, sea duty, etc would end up in that part of the service. They would be trained to serve in global, regional areas so they know something about the countries they might have to operate in. They would be linked to carrier groups supported by missile frigates etc. Projecting Air power is the dominate theme of modern war fare. Behind this have a larger force in reserves in various bases as a support supply network. Set up and independent review procedure for all military purchases. It is ridiculous that Navy Air, the Air Force, Army Air, Coast guard, etc all have different programs for planes. No Former member of the Armed services or member of Congress can work for a defense contractor or Defense industry lobbyist for 10 years.
Intelligence
If 9/11 proved one thing our continued reliance on many independent intelligence gathering organizations who do not communicate with each other is a failure. Once again a unified approach with reporting to party leaders and the executive branch to monitor activities to avoid what Ron Paul called Blow Back foreign policy decisions like say on the advice of the CIA we helped the Bath party take over Iraq, We build up their military to help them fight Iran and then we need to go to war to get Iraq out of Kuwait who invaded it using the weapons we sold them. The CIA and South America could fill an entire other post.
Taxes
To say the tax code is broken is to say the sky is blue on a sunny day. Interestingly Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown both supported a form of the Flat tax, just disagreed on the amount. Mike Huckabee talked about the Fair tax. Simplifying the tax code is paramount in some form so that loop holes are closed and everyone pays their fair share.
Social issues
The government has no business regulating the social behavior of its citizens. Or to put it simply get out of the business of regulating what goes on in Peoples bedrooms or what women do with their bodies.
Global Warming
How about when we cut the tax breaks for oil companies we use the revenues to fund how to deal with this problem.
Preserving the environment
Check out this innovative plan Wildlands and Woodlands: A Vision for the Forests of New England It is a long term management plan gaining interest and support on how best to balance land preservation and economic needs in the Commonwealth. It could work at a national level.
I know there could be a lot more that could be included in one post but I suspect the BMG Brain trust will have at it to critique, revile, comment and add.
Eliminating the government’s ability to borrow strikes me as a bad idea. We borrowed out the wazoo to finance WWII, for example. Sometimes crisis strikes and you need the extra cash to finance it. I’d change this plank to require, say, 3/4 of Congress to approve any additional debt. This approval would have to be for a specific purpose, not just a generic “to fund all the pork”.
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p>Secondly, I’ve long thought about the Supreme Court term limit possibility. My number had always been 15 years, with no re-appointment possible — ever. Going back to the original design for the SCOTUS, the long terms of service insured that sudden shifts of national mood wouldn’t change the court’s function or output, but long-term (and thus more permanent and important) shifts would be reflected. Kind of a moving average of national sentiment.
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p>But it’s important that you not get judges who pander to the people. Jurisprudence should not be about what’s popular. I know, lots of states elect judges, and this is just such a tremendously bad idea for this precise reason. So if you’re going to set term limits on the SCOTUS, they can’t be re-appointable, or else you run into the possibility of pandering.
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p>E.g. Thomas has been there almost 20 years; if he’d been forced out by term limits but could be re-appointed, there’s an excellent possibility he’d spend the last 3 or 4 years of his term crafting his opinions to suit whoever the President was.
…. of a Higher level of approval for using debt. NE Town Meetings use 4/5ths. It’s just too easy right now.
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p>The Supreme Court length of term has to be seen in an historical light The Court stacking with younger judges comes off as a constitutional loophole because I suspect the founding fathers never envisioned 30+ years of service given average life spans in the 1700’s.
You state:
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p>This is untrue and ignorant.
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p>The fact is that “your” (the baby boomers’) money has not been “raided” or “stolen.” Rather it has been wisely invested in safe federal bonds.
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p>To be fair, what you have done is simply accepted the scare tactics adopted by vitually every politician. But the “raid on the Social Security Trust Fund” is no more than political rhetoric.
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p>Since 1969, the feds have combined the Social Security surplus with the other accounts managed by the federal government for the purpose of reporting the budget. By adding the two together, the federal budget is much more likely to be in “surplus” or “balance.” Yes, this hides an underlying budget deficit but it does not affect the actual finances of the Social Security program.
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p>So what does “raiding the Trust Fund” mean? When Social Security loans money to the federal government (by buying bonds), the government can either spend the money or use it to pay off some other bond holder. If the federal government spends the money, this increases national debt and some people refer to as, “raiding the Social Security Trust Fund.” But no money is taken out of the Social Security Trust Fund!
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p>The federal government is simply investing the money that boomers (and other seniors) paid/pay in payroll taxes in federal bonds. When the government spends the money it gets in those bonds, it is younger people who will be stuck paying off that debt but it has no negative impact on Social Security. Putting the portion of payroll taxes designated for Social Security into a “lockbox” would simply mean that the surplus funds would be used to pay off other national debt rather than spent in the particular fiscal year. Again, it’s a good idea to not continue to add to the national debt (for many, many reasons) but the “lockbox” has nothing to do with “saving Social Security.”
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p>The bottom line is that a “lockbox” for Social Security (“stopping the raiding”) does absolutely nothing to “save” the Social Security program. The reality is that only an increase in payroll taxes and/or a reduction in benefits (including through an income tax on benefits) will generate enough money to pay for the retirement benefits of longer-living seniors in to the future.
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p>Personally, I support replacing the payroll taxes entirely with a larger, progressive, graduated federal income tax at a rate high enough to fully fund Social Security for the foreseeable future. You may disagree and/or have better ideas but a “ban on raiding” simply doesn’t mean anything at all.
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….when Social Security runs out of money so (as you say my grand kids) will have to kick in more because we are still paying off the national debt to replace the Money Social security lent the future in the first place to fund the national.
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p>Sounds like a euphemism for Raid to me.
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p>So I guess you would agres with my Balanced budget proposal.