We have swayed from the Constitution and the dream of our founders. Our public officials, who have sworn to work for the public good, work instead for special interests. Money continues to buy influence at all levels and the people's one power, the vote, is losing ground to these high dollar groups whose donations more than outweigh the will of the people. We have the lowest voter turnout of any western nation because our citizens realize that our current group of politicians are simply two sides of the same coin. Once they get into office, they fall into the trap of only wishing to win the next election and are afraid to make decisions based on what is right, but rather on what will get them another term and keep a minority of special interests content. A radical change is needed to our way of governing and electing leaders. 1. This will allow time to develop a well thought out budget without having to rush, at the last minute, to get it passed, with continuing resolutions and middle of the night deals, 2, Term limits. After all, we have these built into the constitution for the presidency. Why not for members of both houses? One suggestion would be to change the terms. Adjust the House of Representatives to 4 years with only two terms and the Senate to two terms also. Under the current system, the members of the house must devote a majority of their time to fund raising for the next election rather than working, as the founders imagined, for the good of their constituents, 3. Change the presidential election process altogether with a greatly reduced election cycle of only 180 days from a candidate announcement to the election. The primaries should be on one day so as to equalize the relevance of each state. I want to take the money out of the election process altother and turn it into a publicly funded process. The current system allows donors to give unlimited amounts of money to campaigns through PACs and loopholes in the virtually impotent campaign finance system. Each party is to blame for our current mess where incrementalism, gridlock and special interests rule the day. We are unable to make the
sweeping changes needed to fix our tax system, healthcare system, infrastructure and so many other pressing issues. If we don't move quickly I fear we will lose our place as both the leader of the free world and as the moral compass that the world once looked up to and trusted.
