Warren Buffett s ideas for fixing Congress

[grannywils]

I received an email today from a friend, and found it interesting,so am passing it along for commentary. Please let me know what you guys think... (Not about the whole email thing, but about the suggestions)

 

 

Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:

 

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just Pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more Than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible For re-election.

 

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) Took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail, Cell phones, etc.

 

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year Or less to become the law of the land- all because of public pressure.

 

Supposedly Warren Buffet is asking people to forward an email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn asking each of those to do likewise. I don't know if that is true or not, but the premise is intriguing. In any event, following are the specifics of said email:

 

CongressionalReform Act of 2012 _

 

1.No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no Pay when they're out of office.

 

2.Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

 

3.Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

 

4.Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower ofCPI or 3%.

 

5.Congress loses their current health care system and Participates in the same health care system as the American people.

 

6.Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

 

7.All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void Effective1/1/12. The American people did not make this Contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers Envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their Term(s), then go home and back to work.

 

According to Mr. Buffett, "THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!"

 

 

 

[marharth]

I remember seeing something like this a while ago.

 

How exactly are you supposed to pass any of this though?

[Marxist ßastard]

This is an exact copy of this thread.

 

The thread, in the first place, was a copy of a chain e-mail.

[Deleted472477User]

All the griping aside, this sounds good to me. Maybe Congress on both sides of the aisle would be more careful of their spending!

[Thandal]

This is an exact copy of this thread.

 

The thread, in the first place, was a copy of a chain e-mail.

a) That may have been where GWils saw it.

 

b) The post was prefaced by:

... so am passing it along for commentary. Please let me know what you guys think... (Not about the whole email thing, but about the suggestions)

c) The was no embedded email link to even make a reply or forward possible. (But you helpfully supplied that part.)

 

d) This is the "Debates" forum, where discussion about controversial subjects is expected. So what did you expect?

[grannywils]

Thandal, thank you for coming to my defense. As it happens that is not where I saw the remarks this time. I had completely forgotten about Aurielius' earlier thread. In fact I had even posted on his thread back then. Duh!!! I have been having memory problems lately; apparently, unlike MB, who seems to have plenty of time to make sure we all mind our P's and Q's.:rolleyes:

 

In any event, MB, get a grip!! I apologize for reposting something that has already been discussed. However, as pointed out above by Nyxalinth, the ideas have merit, and may therefore be worthy of discussion. If you are not interested, go away and post on a different thread. Goodness knows we have lots of them....

[Syco21]

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just Pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more Than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible For re-election.

No. Not all members are responsible, only the majority. This would eliminate good people from Congress, which would be counterproductive.

 

1.No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no Pay when they're out of office.

Term limits are a great idea. Repealing pension benefits is also a good idea. Taking pension benefits from those that have already earned them, however, is not.

 

2.Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

Yes and know. Do it for future reps, but not past/current reps.

 

5.Congress loses their current health care system and Participates in the same health care system as the American people.

No. Most federal employees receive full health benefits. So should they.

 

7.All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void Effective1/1/12. The American people did not make this Contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers Envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their Term(s), then go home and back to work.

Actually we did. When we voted them into office, we gave them the power to do these things. When they did these things and we sat back and allowed it to happen, we gave our blessing. We did give them these contracts.

[sukeban]

I think that Mr. Buffet's proposals sort of skirt the issue as to what is wrong with our Congress.

 

1. Term limits are an interesting example. Certainly, few people support the idea of career politicians, especially when they have more or less made their career obfuscating issues and ensuring that nothing important ever gets passed. However, having entirely amateur legislatures might not be such a good idea in practice. Yes, you can have an excellent staff, but really--it takes a long time to familiarize yourself with the actual mechanism of governance, let alone to master the issues that you are expected to act upon. So having a constant turnover of Representatives every two years would perhaps be more counterproductive mayhem than it would be good governance.

 

2. Congress should be bound equally by every law that we the people are subject to. This includes healthcare. They need to be in the same boat as those that they make the laws for, otherwise they have little-to-no incentive to craft well-designed legislation.

 

3. The "3% GDP and You're Out" clause sounds good, and in most cases probably would be. But consider another recession or economic downturn, it would essentially preclude any sort of counter-cyclical spending by the government (stimulus) in order prime the economic pump for recovery. Perhaps if there were some sort of exemption for truly dire economic circumstances? Certainly, a country should not run a budget deficit when its economy is strong.

 

But really, while we're making Constitutional Amendments, I would propose the following:

 

1. No corporate or union money in American elections. Individual human donors are limited to spending $10,000 per-candidate (presidential) and $50,000 per party (see below) per-election. All other financing is done by the government, with a minimum voter registration threshold (moderately low) in order to qualify for the program. Candidates cannot opt out, but may spend the money any way they like, including choosing not to spend it. Spending amounts are to be adjusted annually for inflation.

 

2. Senate is reorganized. One Senator per-state by default, the rest are apportioned on the basis of population with the census.

 

3. The Senate is no longer able to make its own rules as a body. Its exact functioning, including the abolition of the filibuster, would then be codified--never again to be changed.

 

4. House of Representatives is elected using state party slates rather than geographic districts (to avoid gerrymandering). Seats are still apportioned by state population, however.

 

Two approaches to the same problem: Mr. Buffet's proposal is to use the metaphorical stick to get Congress moving; mine is rather to make Congress more inherently democratic--which would ideally lead to better governing outcomes. Basically, I would aim to lower the barriers to entry involved in getting into politics. This would, as per economics, create more competition in the industry--in this case government. Presently, the barriers to entry are extremely high, as there is just too much money in politics and our political machinery is too slanted toward the two-party system. One could, of course, combine the two if they so desired, for hopefully even better outcomes :D

Edited March 14, 2012 by sukeban

[HeyYou]

Trouble is, in order for either method of reforms to be implemented, the very people that you are attempting to impose this on, are the same folks that would be voting on it. Zero chance it would ever pass. Same thing goes for campaign finance reform, or altering pay rates, and insurance packages. None of it stands a snowballs chance in hades of ever making it out of congress, to the presidents desk.

[Marxist ßastard]

Mr. Buffet's proposals

Just to be clear, only the first two paragraphs refer to Warren Buffett at all. What happened was a bunch of spammers circulated a chain e-mail called the "Congressional Reform Act of 2009," back in October of that year, and it had no reference to Buffett at all. In 2011, spammers modified the original e-mail: first changing the "2009" to "2011," then prefixing it with something Warren Buffett said in July of that year. Now spammers (or just one spammer?) have taken last year's e-mail and changed the "2011" to "2012," leaving the Buffett quote intact. Buffet certainly never said anything about a "Congressional Reform Act of 2009" (nor "of 2011," nor "of 2012"); he only said that one quote about making all Congresspeople ineligible for re-election if the deficit is more than 3% of GDP.

 

But that quote was taken out of context, anyways – Buffett wasn't saying the deficit was a problem which needed to be fixed, just that it was a trivial problem in the first place. Here are some more quotes from that same interview:

• "We had debt at 120% of GDP, far higher than this, after World War II, and no one went around threatening we're going to ruin the credit of the United States or something in order to get a better balance of debt to GDP. We just went about our business, and people did it in a cooperative way."
• "You're playing with fire when you don't need to play with fire. We don't need to tell the rest of the world that anytime people in Congress start throwing a tantrum that we're not going to pay our bills."

The whole interview, by the way, was Buffett explaining that the debt ceiling ought to be abolished.

 

2. Senate is reorganized. One Senator per-state by default, the rest are apportioned on the basis of population with the census.

 

3. The Senate is no longer able to make its own rules as a body. Its exact functioning, including the abolition of the filibuster, would then be codified--never again to be changed.

 

4. House of Representatives is elected using state party slates rather than geographic districts (to avoid gerrymandering). Seats are still apportioned by state population, however.

It sounds like you're trying to make the Senate into the House and the House into a proportional, party-list system. Why not cut to the chase and remove the Senate entirely, then move the House to a mixed-member proportional system?

 

Edited March 14, 2012 by Marxist ßastard