Sunday, August 15, 2010

Fixing Congress - Step One

Congress needs a fix.  I think I know the first step.  Make all members of the House of Representative and the Senate have the same term length.  In case you didn't know, members of the House have two year terms, while Senators are elected for six years. Currently the entire House of Representatives and one third of the Senate is up for election every two years. 

When I am King, they will all be up for election every four years. If you want to throw out the whole government, you'll have your chance.  But, you should get two or three years of  service before the re-election cycle starts.  Currently, members of the House start running for re-election as soon as their election is over.  On the other hand, Senators tend to take a four year nap before they start their re-election campaign.

The major focus of Congress should be passing important pieces of legislation, not pandering to special interest groups. No one can run a four year election campaign -- they'll bomb out due to over exposure.  Hopefully this will force them to do some work in the first few years of their term.  If not, throw the bums out.

Another side benefit of everyone having the same term length is we'll save a boat load of money.  With half as many elections, the savings will be in the billions.  Who said liberals can't cut spending.