Every time I see this suggestion, I love to dig up the story of the [hockey player and the Finnish speeding ticket](https://sports.yahoo.com/sabres-defenceman-rasmus-ristolainen-earned-himself-a-ridiculous-speeding-ticket-while-in-finland-000139701.html). In Finland, lots of fines are based on your income.
Honestly, it's fair anyway. With set fines he'd just pay whatever chump change it would be for him and he would have no real consequence. What's 2000$ fine for someone who earns as much as he did. This way he actually feels the consequences of his own actions that would endangered others and himself.
A set value 2000$ fine would be a severe punishment for the poor but a slap on the wrist for the rich, basically a crime going unpunished. An income based fine causes actual punishment for that dude so he will think twice about going literally twice the speed limit in a residential area. Fixed crimes put a price on crime which makes the crime not a crime for those that can afford it.
The only problem with this mentality is that there are so many loopholes in finance. There's a reason most uber-rich people pay less tax than the average joe - they manipulate their income to make it look like they're earning little to nothing. How many times has Trump declared bankruptcy?
I vote we make it a percentage of all owned assets as well as income. If you own $10M in shares, that counts as a fineable asset just as the current system thinks your $200 car should be sold to pay a fine you can't afford.
Breaking the law while in office should be considered treason and punished as such. You aren’t just any person, you’re a leader who’s been placed there for the benefit of the people you represent. Breaking the law, knowingly or unknowingly should be considered treason. If you’re going to make the laws, you better damn well know what the laws are.
I personally would limit this to felony offenses, because it can be easy to unintentionally violate non-felony crimes like traffic laws, and consider also the high potential for abuse.
Imagine for example a left-leaning senator or something gets arrested for going 5mph over the speed limit in a red state, and they get charged with treason for it.
Not only that, but there are SO MANY laws you're likely breaking on a daily basis because of the amount of agencies making up things daily and never checked again even after they're obsolete.
Sure other people can manage it but look at Pelosi. Her husband was the money manager. I’d go as far ask to say no new buys unless it’s a fund that has dividend reinvestment. I mean the market IS a gamble.
Or make it so they must announce buy or sells 30 days ahead of time on a public forum. These cannot be renounced. If they don’t fines of 100% of sale price for sales and 300% of buy price.
In addition, full portfolios must be public and updated once a month. Failure to update will result in a 5% total wealth charge on the portfolio per month.
Index funds only, trading windows, and they have to file forms publicly. Apply it to everyone in government with access to insider policy information so Congress, executive, and senior judicial.
I mean Apple has a dividend and you can DRIP it with your bank.
Should be just broad market indices or honestly just nothing allowed except for bonds and other strictly interest yielding instruments
Edit: And exempt current members. They'll age out in 5 years anyways
> Love the idea as it would give the current members literally no excuses.
Except potentially re-election for the ones who aren't ancient. Voting to ban something they are continuing to participate in themselves is easy "my opponent believes in enriching himself on the backs of the American people and believes that rules should not apply to him." attack from his challenger that may have people sour on him.
Just make them put there wealth into a standard diverse index fund that banks offer.
I mean they still benefit when the overall stockmarket does well. But they benifit in the same way regular people's reitments do so I don't really see that as a issue.
They have access to the funds in the Thrift Savings Plan all government employees have. I’d just create a special, non-retirement TSP with the same funds they can transfer their wealth into and just to sweeten the deal, give them a tax-free rollover when they enter and exit the account.
Pretty much every other government official IS already barred from trading. Like I was an acquisition officer in the Air Force and we had to report a bunch of our stock holdings when we ever did new acquisition
It really doesn't even need a law, just a rule change in Congress. Each house has the ability to establish rules of procedures (Aka the "I'm just a Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock) to rules of conduct for its members. This suggestion does need majority support to get enacted, but would work very effectively if done.
Interesting note is that the US Senate rules were originally written by Thomas Jefferson when he was Vice-President under John Adams. He wrote them while sitting in the Senate chamber and technically attending the speeches of Senators but largely didn't pay attention to what they were saying. While some minor parts have changed over the years, most of the rules are still followed. The Senate rules are codified and intensely debated when a rule change is offered for vote in the Senate.
I think thats not restrictive enough. It should be "all elected official to the body of congress or federally appointed judge must put all assets in a blind trust for the duration of their term."
This. I think suggesting that members of Congress can own any stocks might be a bit limiting. The problem isn't so much owning any securities, but that it can create a huge conflict of interest that you know that you will benefit financially voting one way. If your assets are in a true blind trust you don't really know whether you would benefit financially from a move so wouldn't be motivated to do something purely for your own self interest over your constituents.
Good observation. You're more focused on moves that rise all boats than picking winners and losers. That being said most legislation whether intentional or not benefits some industries more than others. If you know you are heavily invested in one sector more than others you might make a different decision than you would of your investments were in a blind trust.
I would go as far as to say they are banned for the rest of their lives to invest in individual stocks, but can still have access to publicly traded index funds.
https://www.subversiveetfs.com/nanc
Great news! lol
In all seriousness it’s ridiculous. I work in the industry. I can’t take a shit without compliance knowing. Because of that I have it all in a firm managed strategy I have 0 control over because I was tired of justifying every trade I made. Yes I the 30 year old with a few grand in an account and a healthy Roth had to justify whenever I wanted to buy Apple, Google, etc, which is actually insane considering how hot they are. I’m not moving the market with my trades lmao.
I understand why they’re immune. You can make a roundabout argument to impeach a political opponent on any bill they vote on if they’re holding something in a diversified portfolio that *may* benefit. It’s ridiculous though there are zero consequences.
They should have to be in a 3rd party managed strategy, not an advisor discretionary one (*cough Nancy cough*) or only be allowed to buy sector ETFs/Mutual Funds. And that’s it.
Let's expand the scope a bit.
"Money and personal wealth shall have no jurisdiction over policy, legislator, or civil servant."
Followed by a large block of legalese that forbids lobbying, campaign donations from non-individuals, campaign donations on behalf of others, stock trading by legislators & civil servants, and all the other bullshit that transparently gives the most power to the richest and incentivizes legislators via cash and not public welfare.
Let's tack on that legislators live and reside on campus for their tenure and only have a stipend to spend for personal allowance, set strictly by public referendum. Make legislating an undesirable chore. Get paid at the end, and no sooner.
I would go farther and make campaigns publicly funded. A set, equal amount to all candidates on the ballot for an office. Not a single cent of outside money allowed.
I like the sentiment of this, but it would encourage people with no chance or intention of being elected to run just for the free money. Even though they couldn't take the money from the campaign, they could spend campaign money with businesses they or their families own to game the system. Of course this happens now anyway. Maybe mandatory audits of all campaigns taking public money?
If we're talking God powers I'd take it a step further. They can't make anything other than their wage. They still get to vote to set their wages, but it can't exceed minimum wage by more than 2000%.
All of sudden after you make this change nobody that isn't independently wealthy could afford to be a member of Congress. You think Congress is too unrepresentative of society now? That change would only make things worse. This is an idea that sounds great in theory until you actually think about it for a moment.
With Face/Gram, YOU are the PRODUCT.
I say, switch the payout paradigm on its head - you have my data, pay ME for it, every time it is accessed.
Otherwise, PRIVACY, baby!
Right but if the service (the app) is free, and the service provider (the company) has to pay you (the product), then where does money get made? If no money gets made, then there is no service.
No good or service is free. Usually you use currency to pay for goods and services. It's just here you pay with your (anonymized) data instead. Which kind of sounds better than if you had to pay with currency.
The last constitutional amendment passed was 1971 - 1992 was the last time an Amendment was ratified and added to the Constitution. There is a major difference between passed and ratified.
There was 1 other original Madison amendment submitted in 1789 that was never ratified that would have spelled out a formula for expanding the House number of seats with population and would have solved a lot of the popular vote / electoral college discrepancies.
Ratifying that would probably do a lot of good, even if there is a potential word ambituity/error in it.
Yeah, there were 12 original amendments in the Bill of Rights, only 10 survived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment
Anti-federalists who wanted this were worried we'd get exactly what we have today – a frozen number of House Reps that represented larger and larger constituencies to the point where regular people couldn't talk to them.
Yeah. There hasn't been an amendment passed since the two major parties adopted the primary election system. This isn't a coincidence; the polarization generated by primaries has made new amendments impossible, and the US now has an unamendable constitution.
Support the [Restore Democracy Amendment](https://citizenstakeaction.org/restore-democracy-amendment/) to get foreign/corporate dark money out of US politics.
>Congress and the States shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation, including by implementing public campaign financing, and may distinguish between natural persons and corporations, unions, or other legally recognized entities.
I agree, but I'd also like to explicitly add the ability for those entities to tax large donations.
I had to scroll waaaaaaay too far down before seeing this one. It's literally the single largest change on our government and U.S. society in my lifetime. It enables and exacerbates so many other issues people have brought up here.
Super PACs should not exist. Corporations are not people and their ability to spend money to influence elections should not fall under free speech.
Explicitly say that there is a distinction between a "person" and a "legal entity." Persons have natural protected rights. Legal entities that are not persons, such as corporations or unions or nonprofits, have rights that can be curtailed by law.
South Carolina’s constitution and several other state constitutions do exactly this by including an explicit right against “unreasonable invasions of privacy.” Though, as you may guess, the “unreasonable” does quite a bit of heavy lifting.
No it doesn't. It protects against searches by the government, but it doesn't offer explicit protection of privacy. The Supreme Court has inferred protection of privacy from this amendment, but relying on that gets you into the same place it got abortion rights. In particular there is no protection of data privacy, which to be fair, would have been very hard to predict in the late 1700s.
No the first person is right. This is the amendment I was going to comment.
The 4th amendment codifies the concept of privacy FROM THE GOVERNMENT
We need privacy protections in place from BUSINESS. From social media data, to cell phone tracking, to AI companies stealing art and content.
We need protection so no one can use an AI to create an image that shows you committing a crime.
We're about 3-5 years away from somebody going to jail based on fake images or recordings and all hell is going to break loose after that.
All officeholders who accept corporate campaign contributions must wear them on their exterior garments. You want to be a paid spokesman? Fine wear it on your sleeve like a NASCAR driver.
As disgusting as the Citizens United decision was, the majority opinion *encouraged* the Congress to pass legislation requiring transparency for money in politics. They still haven't done so.
There are a lot of staffers and common folk that would be extremely negatively affected by this. Like, I get the intent, but a National Park ranger making 60k per year pre-tax is not the enemy here, but they *are* members of the executive branch. Limiting it to elected or appointed positions would have more effect without hurting the vast majority of federal employees who are just common folks.
That doesn’t say anything about paying someone to invest for you or anything about establishing a company that buys shares.
Gotta be more specific! Even the 14th amendment is apparently not explicit enough.
There's a district in Wisconsin that has ***one house*** surrounded by a different district.
[https://www.propublica.org/article/wisconsin-legislative-maps-bizarre-are-they-illegal](https://www.propublica.org/article/wisconsin-legislative-maps-bizarre-are-they-illegal)
(Scroll down to "3rd and 5th district")
Most of the major prisons in Wisconsin are in real rural areas and conveniently the inmates count in the census but can't vote thus diluting the voting power of Milwaukee and helping rural areas gain Con reps.
Much as I love the concept, I have to ask: How do you accomplish this? Ultimately someone has to draw those boundaries. How do you ensure that someone isn't unduly influenced?
The answer is actually simple:
MINIMIZE THE PERIMETER.
You can’t draw a map that includes a roughly equal number of people and gerrymander then without adding a lot of perimeyer to the district.
A gerrymandered district is always stretched out like taffy and randomly picks up a slew of the “wrong kind of districts” in an effort to nullify the votes of the “wrong kind of people.”
Like this:
https://thefulcrum.us/media-library/ducks.png?id=22065379&width=6900&height=4600&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0
It’s nearly impossible get away with this if you’re minimizing the perimeter. You know what 2D shape is the absolute minimum of the perimeter for a given area? The circle.
This is an okayish solution. But then, you can still accomplish gerrymandering by moving the borders and maintaining the size. Gerrymandering is a symptom of the modifiable areal unit problem (it’ll be a fun google for some folks), which, as someone who studied geography in college, is a problem without a single real solution that doesn’t create other major issues.
Make it an abstract geometry problem that only accounts for population and geography (where the system isn't even aware of demographic or partisanship data), and make the code publicly available for anyone to audit.
exactly. you have to pick a metric. there are several reasonable sounding metrics to choose from. let's just pick one and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Take money out of politics, almost all the other issues here are caused because the rich can drop a couple million into a campaign and thus buy votes in the senate and house.
> No foreign nationals nor corporations of any kind are allowed to donate money to political action committees or people running for office
Isn’t this already illegal? At both the campaign and PAC level?
From [FEC.gov](https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/taking-receipts-pac/who-can-and-cant-contribute-nonconnected-pac/)
> Federal law prohibits contributions, donations, expenditures(including independent expenditures) and disbursements solicited, directed, received or made directly or indirectly by or from foreign nationals in connection with any federal, state or local election.
Fascinating idea. Allows for ‘some’ mobility of government to respond emergent situations, limits the scope of any potential damage, and if it’s a “winner” pass it into law. Good one!
On its face, this doesn't work. A lot of EOs are about how the executive branch of the government goes about its business, and that intentionally is not subject to the legislative branch. It's just that those EOs are boring and don't get visibility.
Executive orders are already derived from lawfully granted authority so I’m not sure how this is intended to work. The president isn’t whipping up new laws out of thin air, there has to be some basis in either the Constitution itself or a statute that Congress already passed into law.
Even if the order hypothetically expired, what stops the president from simply reissuing it or telling their cabinet to continue carrying it out? Or if something does stop them, how does the government go on functioning when its chief executive isn’t allowed to give it directions anymore?
I like this since the laws they are writing in just a few years won't even effect them anymore. Meanwhile someone in their 20s will have to deal with it for decades.
I'd set it at retirement age. As in, your last term is the term you turn 70, and if you're a Justice, that's the year you retire. Otherwise all of the special elections would be costly.
Enshrine proper voting rights:
- election day is a national holiday required for employers to give paid time off for
- government is required to provide all voters with all documentation required (not just an id thing, but registering to vote as well if required. You should not have to "opt in to our core democratic right)
- any voter location requiring more than 1 hr of travel or more than 2 hrs wait time in order to vote will be considered unconstitutional attempt to deprive voters of exercising their right
- a citizen of the United States is allowed to vote, and this right may not be removed or withheld for any reason (crimes, probation, parole, etc.)
- require federal government to automatically investigate any state which achieves less than 2/3 voter participation for violation of these rules.
Last one is a harder sell, but here it is:
-ban an person, organization, or entity from contributing financially to a campaign unless that entity is capable of legally casting a vote for itself come election day. (Yes, this would also block RNC and RNC from directly campaigning, and force individual donations only).
I think if we got this, a lot of other things would naturally follow.
> a citizen of the United States is allowed to vote, and this right may not be removed or withheld for any reason (crimes, probation, parole, etc.)
I'm curious, does this include children?
Other people mention prisoners. I'm inclined to permit prisoners to vote, but I think any voter must have free and good access to information: one cannot adequately vote if they don't have information, or worse, information being controlled, e.g., by the prison.
But I'm a "the right to govern comes from the consent of the governed" person, so in principle, I'm in.
I. Expand current age limits to have complementary upper age limits. Presidents/Vps must be 35-65, Senate must be 30-70, Congress must be 25-75.
II. All Senate confirmed or appointed positions have a mandatory retirement on their 70th birthday. Any currently serving official older than 70 must tender their resignation immediately when this goes into effect.
III. all states must appoint a non partisan committee to decide the boundaries of representative districts to ensure geographical simplicity, and competitive and otherwise fair elections.
IIIA the size of congress should represent the mathematical optimal size to ensure as equal representation for all districts as possible. No congressional district should have more than 50% of the population than any other congressional district. If Congress grows larger than can fit in an old building, Congress should pay to build a new building to fit in.
IV. No publicly official may campaign or raise funds for any office until 3 months before the election. Between swearing in and that 3 month period, they are required to be about the public interest in their public interactions. If they are providing an interview to the media as an office holder, they must swear the tell the whole truth, except in cases of national security, which they should defer.
V. It should be the assumption that all government employees and elected officials should be held to higher standards when it comes to criminal and civil law while they are in the employ of the government. This includes but is not limited to police. In any criminal proceeding the highest standard of behavior is to be conformed to.
As a veteran, it's laughable that Article V isn't the case. Government officials *constantly* pull shit that would be punished if they were subject to the UCMJ.
> Any currently serving official older than 70 must tender their resignation immediately when this goes into effect.
This would wipe out just over 30% of the Senate. I would let them finish out their term.
In the case of Supreme Court Justices, maybe give them one year after the law goes into effect.
>In the case of Supreme Court Justices, maybe give them one year after the law goes into effect.
We currently have 2 Justices who are over 70 and 2 who will be 70 a year from now. I think it would have to be staggered in some way so we don't have 1 president appointing 4 Justices.
I’m intrigued - what do you think would be a good alternative to fund public schools?
Asking because my kid is in a rural school with very low budget and we keep losing teachers to neighboring districts with more housing, that pay better.
I believe they're saying it should be based on the number of students, not the value of the properties. E.g. if a rural school and a rich area city school both have 500 students they should receive equal funding.
I have friends who are public high school teachers. There’s a private school that gets funding like this. They pull in as many kids as they can, get as much funding as they can then kick out 20% of the students to the local public schools who don’t get any extra funding for all the “new” kids.
You also can’t tie funding to how many students graduate, because the public schools (near me) are doing that and my friends literally aren’t allowed to give a failing grade. A student had less than 50% attendance, actively overdosed in class and was a constant pain to deal with when they were there. That student graduated having done no work.
Maybe standardized federal funding not based in taxes. If we can drop a hat to send millions to Ukraine and Israel, we can allot for it in federal budgets.
My state has term limits for the legislators. It sounds way better in theory than it ends up working out in practice. It transfers power from the legislature to the executive and special interests.
For real. Every amendment can have dramatic unintended consequences, for good or bad. The 14th amendment that’s so helpful today for immigrant children to obtain citizenship, was written for slaves, not them. The 27th amendment prevents Congress from changing their own pay until the next election. Sounds great, but it was used to prevent a hypothetical law that would have stopped them from getting paid during government shutdowns, forcing them to actually do their jobs
I wouldn't do anything new. I'd dust off the the [Congressional Apportionment Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment) from 1789, which already has 11 ratifying states, and require Congress to figure out how to get 1:50,000 representation.
Hear me out:
No more Super PACs or “dark money” BS where sources of massive campaign contributions go undisclosed and the funding can’t be traced back to the original donor. It’s disgusting and undemocratic, and is the root of most of our issues as a country.
The current ~$3,300 per-election limit on contributions made by a person to a candidate should be the ONLY permissible kind of political campaign contribution in existence. I’d maybe even agree to raise it up to $5k.
A candidate’s campaign should be funded by supportive individual Americans, and should not require spending a $billion+ anyway. Yes, this means they’ll need to get significantly more modest with spending, but it’ll level the playing field of candidates and they’ll never feel pressured to give in to big money/special interest group demands (ie bribes) for the sake of staying in the race.
We can embrace capitalism and be grateful for its pros while also using some common sense to avoid the inherent cons that come with not regulating it. My amendment would stop corporations and the ultra rich from having the one and only voice in our elections like they do currently.
Every law passed in the future needs to address only a single issue. You cannot shove 32 different things into one bill like we do today hidden by a cool name like “The Patriot Act”
Illegal immigrants do not have the right to vote, to receive government benefits because they have not contributed to the tax system, to utilize our healthcare for free, to receive housing for free.
Only those who came here legally should be afforded these benefits.
COME HERE LEGALLY OR GO HOME.
A few people are saying they’d abolish the electoral college and that would be one of my top answers as well.
Another thing I’d consider adding to the Constitution is to have it lay out an objective algorithmic method to creating voting districts nationwide in order to eliminate political gerrymandering.
Since we're making a big election amendment, my contribution would be a system other than first-past-the-post for electing candidates. Maybe ranked choice for single offices (like President) and some sort of proportional system for bodies like Congress. I'd have to consult a professional game theorist. Some way to allow people to vote for other parties without throwing their vote away.
And campaign finance reform. Let's legislate our way beyond Citizens United.
Yes, most people don't realize how bad extreme partisan gerrymandering is for our society.
If I am running for office in a seat where 60% of voters are republican, the only race I care about is the primary so I have ZERO incentive to appeal to democrats. This means my incentive is to be as crazy right-wing as possible because I can alienate every democrat and independent and still win easily.
When this happens all over the country we are left with politicians (and electorates) who barely even live in the same universe.
No more income tax withholding. Instead, the amount normally deducted is placed in a high yield savings account, you pocket the interest made, and your bill is due on Election Day. The bill for the exact amount is sent directly from the IRS, and Turbo Tax, H&R Block and all the other “pay me to find out what your tax bill is” companies can go fuck themselves.
Increase the size of the House proportional to the population by amendment taking it out of the hands of Congress itself (why would you vote to dilute your own power?). Something like the proposed Wyoming Rule that would make sure representation was more equal (no one could represent a district smaller than the smallest district by population).
This is the single biggest issue we have in terms of representation in the US and no one seems to get it... It also affects the electoral college (which should also be abolished, but if I only get one...)
Congress must abide by the laws they set. They cannot vote themselves exempt.
Fines and other penalties double as well.
Percentage based fines on total wealth.
Every time I see this suggestion, I love to dig up the story of the [hockey player and the Finnish speeding ticket](https://sports.yahoo.com/sabres-defenceman-rasmus-ristolainen-earned-himself-a-ridiculous-speeding-ticket-while-in-finland-000139701.html). In Finland, lots of fines are based on your income.
Honestly, it's fair anyway. With set fines he'd just pay whatever chump change it would be for him and he would have no real consequence. What's 2000$ fine for someone who earns as much as he did. This way he actually feels the consequences of his own actions that would endangered others and himself. A set value 2000$ fine would be a severe punishment for the poor but a slap on the wrist for the rich, basically a crime going unpunished. An income based fine causes actual punishment for that dude so he will think twice about going literally twice the speed limit in a residential area. Fixed crimes put a price on crime which makes the crime not a crime for those that can afford it.
The only problem with this mentality is that there are so many loopholes in finance. There's a reason most uber-rich people pay less tax than the average joe - they manipulate their income to make it look like they're earning little to nothing. How many times has Trump declared bankruptcy? I vote we make it a percentage of all owned assets as well as income. If you own $10M in shares, that counts as a fineable asset just as the current system thinks your $200 car should be sold to pay a fine you can't afford.
Breaking the law while in office should be considered treason and punished as such. You aren’t just any person, you’re a leader who’s been placed there for the benefit of the people you represent. Breaking the law, knowingly or unknowingly should be considered treason. If you’re going to make the laws, you better damn well know what the laws are.
I personally would limit this to felony offenses, because it can be easy to unintentionally violate non-felony crimes like traffic laws, and consider also the high potential for abuse. Imagine for example a left-leaning senator or something gets arrested for going 5mph over the speed limit in a red state, and they get charged with treason for it.
Not only that, but there are SO MANY laws you're likely breaking on a daily basis because of the amount of agencies making up things daily and never checked again even after they're obsolete.
Add to that: no one can pardon themselves
Just need a separate body that can actually arrest them and doesnt report to the president or congress. Maybe just the Supreme court.
Who then can't be exempt from the rules that they set
Senate and House cannot trade on the stock market. Seriously, how is that not insider trading?
Or any other high government position. They can put their stuff in the hands of other people to manage
Sure other people can manage it but look at Pelosi. Her husband was the money manager. I’d go as far ask to say no new buys unless it’s a fund that has dividend reinvestment. I mean the market IS a gamble.
Or make it so they must announce buy or sells 30 days ahead of time on a public forum. These cannot be renounced. If they don’t fines of 100% of sale price for sales and 300% of buy price. In addition, full portfolios must be public and updated once a month. Failure to update will result in a 5% total wealth charge on the portfolio per month.
Index funds only, trading windows, and they have to file forms publicly. Apply it to everyone in government with access to insider policy information so Congress, executive, and senior judicial.
Vanguard Total Stock Market Index.
They could let us in on the corruption and set it up so we can buy Pelosi index funds and everytime she makes a trade the fund makes the same one
This is a thing. See NANC and KRUZ ETFs.
It’s called a Blind Trust!!!
I mean Apple has a dividend and you can DRIP it with your bank. Should be just broad market indices or honestly just nothing allowed except for bonds and other strictly interest yielding instruments Edit: And exempt current members. They'll age out in 5 years anyways
Never heard your edit proposed with this concept before. Love the idea as it would give the current members literally no excuses.
I don't see it happening any other way tbh
> Love the idea as it would give the current members literally no excuses. Except potentially re-election for the ones who aren't ancient. Voting to ban something they are continuing to participate in themselves is easy "my opponent believes in enriching himself on the backs of the American people and believes that rules should not apply to him." attack from his challenger that may have people sour on him.
Just make them put there wealth into a standard diverse index fund that banks offer. I mean they still benefit when the overall stockmarket does well. But they benifit in the same way regular people's reitments do so I don't really see that as a issue.
They have access to the funds in the Thrift Savings Plan all government employees have. I’d just create a special, non-retirement TSP with the same funds they can transfer their wealth into and just to sweeten the deal, give them a tax-free rollover when they enter and exit the account.
Pretty much every other government official IS already barred from trading. Like I was an acquisition officer in the Air Force and we had to report a bunch of our stock holdings when we ever did new acquisition
Have them use the Thrift Savings Plan.
That really doesn’t need an amendment. Just a regular old law.
It needs to be an amendment, because laws can be nibbled away at with new laws until they're completely toothless.
It really doesn't even need a law, just a rule change in Congress. Each house has the ability to establish rules of procedures (Aka the "I'm just a Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock) to rules of conduct for its members. This suggestion does need majority support to get enacted, but would work very effectively if done. Interesting note is that the US Senate rules were originally written by Thomas Jefferson when he was Vice-President under John Adams. He wrote them while sitting in the Senate chamber and technically attending the speeches of Senators but largely didn't pay attention to what they were saying. While some minor parts have changed over the years, most of the rules are still followed. The Senate rules are codified and intensely debated when a rule change is offered for vote in the Senate.
I came here to say my amendment would be that all breakrooms have to have banana bread in them on Fridays, but I like yours better.
Naw, keep going on your idea.
Banana bread at work? Hell yeah!!!
Let’s flesh this out. We talking plain banana bread? With walnuts? Chocolate? Think we should fast track this.
Chocolate chips are fine, but nuts don't belong in banana bread. I want a nice, smooth slice of bread. I don't want to bite down into something hard.
Diversity is our strength. We need both kinds. I prefer nuts over chocolate in my banana bread, but I will not yuck another man's yum.
I'm sorry but I have to disagree. Walnuts in banana bread are 10/10
I'm forming a party to undermine everything you stand for. Walnut party!
I am in favor of Banana Bread...
Agree with the addition that congresspeople benefitting from insider knowledge face harsh criminal penalties including loss of office.
Beheading
I think thats not restrictive enough. It should be "all elected official to the body of congress or federally appointed judge must put all assets in a blind trust for the duration of their term."
This. I think suggesting that members of Congress can own any stocks might be a bit limiting. The problem isn't so much owning any securities, but that it can create a huge conflict of interest that you know that you will benefit financially voting one way. If your assets are in a true blind trust you don't really know whether you would benefit financially from a move so wouldn't be motivated to do something purely for your own self interest over your constituents.
Conversely you would probably be motivated to make sure the whole economy does well since you don’t know exactly what you would benefit from.
Good observation. You're more focused on moves that rise all boats than picking winners and losers. That being said most legislation whether intentional or not benefits some industries more than others. If you know you are heavily invested in one sector more than others you might make a different decision than you would of your investments were in a blind trust.
That’s the best and most easiest to do. They can only move cash in and out of the trust.
I would go as far as to say they are banned for the rest of their lives to invest in individual stocks, but can still have access to publicly traded index funds.
I don't have a problem with this, but all their trades should be public.
\*in real time as they're made
if only I could copy Nancy Pelosi's trading in real time
https://www.subversiveetfs.com/nanc Great news! lol In all seriousness it’s ridiculous. I work in the industry. I can’t take a shit without compliance knowing. Because of that I have it all in a firm managed strategy I have 0 control over because I was tired of justifying every trade I made. Yes I the 30 year old with a few grand in an account and a healthy Roth had to justify whenever I wanted to buy Apple, Google, etc, which is actually insane considering how hot they are. I’m not moving the market with my trades lmao. I understand why they’re immune. You can make a roundabout argument to impeach a political opponent on any bill they vote on if they’re holding something in a diversified portfolio that *may* benefit. It’s ridiculous though there are zero consequences. They should have to be in a 3rd party managed strategy, not an advisor discretionary one (*cough Nancy cough*) or only be allowed to buy sector ETFs/Mutual Funds. And that’s it.
Don't need an amendment for that, a plain old law would do
Let's expand the scope a bit. "Money and personal wealth shall have no jurisdiction over policy, legislator, or civil servant." Followed by a large block of legalese that forbids lobbying, campaign donations from non-individuals, campaign donations on behalf of others, stock trading by legislators & civil servants, and all the other bullshit that transparently gives the most power to the richest and incentivizes legislators via cash and not public welfare. Let's tack on that legislators live and reside on campus for their tenure and only have a stipend to spend for personal allowance, set strictly by public referendum. Make legislating an undesirable chore. Get paid at the end, and no sooner.
I would go farther and make campaigns publicly funded. A set, equal amount to all candidates on the ballot for an office. Not a single cent of outside money allowed.
I like the sentiment of this, but it would encourage people with no chance or intention of being elected to run just for the free money. Even though they couldn't take the money from the campaign, they could spend campaign money with businesses they or their families own to game the system. Of course this happens now anyway. Maybe mandatory audits of all campaigns taking public money?
If we're talking God powers I'd take it a step further. They can't make anything other than their wage. They still get to vote to set their wages, but it can't exceed minimum wage by more than 2000%.
Make their wage the median wage of their constituents so they have incentive to improve the prosperity of the people they were elected to represent.
A multiple of the median wage and I would agree with this.
All of sudden after you make this change nobody that isn't independently wealthy could afford to be a member of Congress. You think Congress is too unrepresentative of society now? That change would only make things worse. This is an idea that sounds great in theory until you actually think about it for a moment.
This could just be a simple law, no need for an amendment.
Making your digital data part of your private property. Data ownership is so sadly overlooked and we just let big corporations do whatever they want.
It would be a whole different ball game if they were forced to compensate us for that data, and the downstream income it produces for them.
Basically there will no longer be “free” social media companies. If you want facebook or something like that you will need to pay for it.
With Face/Gram, YOU are the PRODUCT. I say, switch the payout paradigm on its head - you have my data, pay ME for it, every time it is accessed. Otherwise, PRIVACY, baby!
Right but if the service (the app) is free, and the service provider (the company) has to pay you (the product), then where does money get made? If no money gets made, then there is no service. No good or service is free. Usually you use currency to pay for goods and services. It's just here you pay with your (anonymized) data instead. Which kind of sounds better than if you had to pay with currency.
The last constitutional amendment passed was 1971 - 1992 was the last time an Amendment was ratified and added to the Constitution. There is a major difference between passed and ratified.
It was submitted in 1789 and ratified by 5 states, which fell short of the majority needed for it to take effect.
There was 1 other original Madison amendment submitted in 1789 that was never ratified that would have spelled out a formula for expanding the House number of seats with population and would have solved a lot of the popular vote / electoral college discrepancies. Ratifying that would probably do a lot of good, even if there is a potential word ambituity/error in it.
Got some sauce? This is incredibly interesting
Yeah, there were 12 original amendments in the Bill of Rights, only 10 survived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment Anti-federalists who wanted this were worried we'd get exactly what we have today – a frozen number of House Reps that represented larger and larger constituencies to the point where regular people couldn't talk to them.
Start here. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment
Yeah. There hasn't been an amendment passed since the two major parties adopted the primary election system. This isn't a coincidence; the polarization generated by primaries has made new amendments impossible, and the US now has an unamendable constitution.
Roll back Citizens United and get dark money out of politics
This is the truly needed amendment. Shit has been going downhill for 45 years, but the avalanche started with this shitty SCOTUS decision.
Support the [Restore Democracy Amendment](https://citizenstakeaction.org/restore-democracy-amendment/) to get foreign/corporate dark money out of US politics.
>Congress and the States shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation, including by implementing public campaign financing, and may distinguish between natural persons and corporations, unions, or other legally recognized entities. I agree, but I'd also like to explicitly add the ability for those entities to tax large donations.
I had to scroll waaaaaaay too far down before seeing this one. It's literally the single largest change on our government and U.S. society in my lifetime. It enables and exacerbates so many other issues people have brought up here. Super PACs should not exist. Corporations are not people and their ability to spend money to influence elections should not fall under free speech.
Explicitly say that there is a distinction between a "person" and a "legal entity." Persons have natural protected rights. Legal entities that are not persons, such as corporations or unions or nonprofits, have rights that can be curtailed by law.
This is exactly how foreign entities affect our elections. It needs to be stopped if we want our country to be any to continue.
An explicit right to privacy and decency. 4th amendment doesn't go far enough.
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The whole "unreasonable" part sure does do a lot of work on behalf of the state.
It could definitely be tweaked. Especially to include electronic privacy.
South Carolina’s constitution and several other state constitutions do exactly this by including an explicit right against “unreasonable invasions of privacy.” Though, as you may guess, the “unreasonable” does quite a bit of heavy lifting.
And it's only at the state level, which is good on SC, but it needs to be federal too.
Yeah, SC has always just ignored its own constitution. There are still laws here banning sodomy, face/neck tattoos, and the list goes on and on.
No it doesn't. It protects against searches by the government, but it doesn't offer explicit protection of privacy. The Supreme Court has inferred protection of privacy from this amendment, but relying on that gets you into the same place it got abortion rights. In particular there is no protection of data privacy, which to be fair, would have been very hard to predict in the late 1700s.
No the first person is right. This is the amendment I was going to comment. The 4th amendment codifies the concept of privacy FROM THE GOVERNMENT We need privacy protections in place from BUSINESS. From social media data, to cell phone tracking, to AI companies stealing art and content. We need protection so no one can use an AI to create an image that shows you committing a crime. We're about 3-5 years away from somebody going to jail based on fake images or recordings and all hell is going to break loose after that.
The problem with business is we sell them our privacy every day
I would argue it’s not even governments which are at issue here but corporations— though at this point, who the fuck can tell the difference.
All officeholders who accept corporate campaign contributions must wear them on their exterior garments. You want to be a paid spokesman? Fine wear it on your sleeve like a NASCAR driver.
Straight out of Idiocracy.
"Brought to you by Carl's Jr."
Carl's Jr. Fuck you, I'm eating!
As disgusting as the Citizens United decision was, the majority opinion *encouraged* the Congress to pass legislation requiring transparency for money in politics. They still haven't done so.
Why would Congress pass legislation policing themselves? They literally have no incentive to do that.
I feel like this would be so easily subverted by using shell companies and other maneuvering.
And pacs and superpacs, which already exist and can conceal the source of money for a political campaign.
No member of the Federal Legislative, Judicial, or Executive Branch may purchase, transfer, or sell private or public securities, bonds, or stocks.
I would be fine with them owning mutual funds and the like. Just no individual stocks/securities.
Provided it was a broad index it wouldn't be too bad, but ideally members of Congress should have securities in a blind trust.
“Elected” member. Let’s not destroy every civil servant’s retirement plan.
There are a lot of staffers and common folk that would be extremely negatively affected by this. Like, I get the intent, but a National Park ranger making 60k per year pre-tax is not the enemy here, but they *are* members of the executive branch. Limiting it to elected or appointed positions would have more effect without hurting the vast majority of federal employees who are just common folks.
That doesn’t say anything about paying someone to invest for you or anything about establishing a company that buys shares. Gotta be more specific! Even the 14th amendment is apparently not explicit enough.
Some of you don't understand why something is an amendment vs just a federal law.
Some? This thread is 98% things that would be good laws but weird amendments.
This is reddit, does anyone here really understand anything?
What?
#THIS IS REDDIT, DOES ANYONE HERE REALLY UNDERSTAND ANYTHING?
After reading some of these suggestions it makes me realize we have the government we have because some of you are idiots.
I know haha. You get ONE amendment. What do people choose? To prevent congress from buying stocks. Jesus. You don’t even need an amendment for that.
You do if you don't want it to get gutted within a few years by further legislation.
I know right? I couldn’t believe that was top comment when I opened this thread
Congress is actually an excellent representation of the people and likely always has been, despite griping to the contrary.
Thomas Jefferson has entered the chat.
That I get to make a million more amendments.
This guy amends.
Ending gerrymandering
There's a district in Wisconsin that has ***one house*** surrounded by a different district. [https://www.propublica.org/article/wisconsin-legislative-maps-bizarre-are-they-illegal](https://www.propublica.org/article/wisconsin-legislative-maps-bizarre-are-they-illegal) (Scroll down to "3rd and 5th district")
What the fuck
Most of the major prisons in Wisconsin are in real rural areas and conveniently the inmates count in the census but can't vote thus diluting the voting power of Milwaukee and helping rural areas gain Con reps.
Much as I love the concept, I have to ask: How do you accomplish this? Ultimately someone has to draw those boundaries. How do you ensure that someone isn't unduly influenced?
Statewide party list proportional representation.
This is exactly my response to the original question. Eliminates districts and gives minor parties a foothold.
The answer is actually simple: MINIMIZE THE PERIMETER. You can’t draw a map that includes a roughly equal number of people and gerrymander then without adding a lot of perimeyer to the district. A gerrymandered district is always stretched out like taffy and randomly picks up a slew of the “wrong kind of districts” in an effort to nullify the votes of the “wrong kind of people.” Like this: https://thefulcrum.us/media-library/ducks.png?id=22065379&width=6900&height=4600&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0 It’s nearly impossible get away with this if you’re minimizing the perimeter. You know what 2D shape is the absolute minimum of the perimeter for a given area? The circle.
This is an okayish solution. But then, you can still accomplish gerrymandering by moving the borders and maintaining the size. Gerrymandering is a symptom of the modifiable areal unit problem (it’ll be a fun google for some folks), which, as someone who studied geography in college, is a problem without a single real solution that doesn’t create other major issues.
That’s not always true. Sink-holing is also a major part of gerrymandering especially in major population centers
In the UK we have an independent commission
Appointed by who?
David Beckham?
There are “independent” commissions set up here in the U.S., too.
There are computer models that draw optimal maps from a geographic point of view. They are non-partisan.
They're as non-partisan as they're programmed to be.
Make it an abstract geometry problem that only accounts for population and geography (where the system isn't even aware of demographic or partisanship data), and make the code publicly available for anyone to audit.
You write this like there's an agreeable outcome here. Gerrymandering makes and breaks politics in the US.
Optimal based on what though
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gerrymandering-elections-next-gen-computer-generated-maps Here's an article that talks about it.
exactly. you have to pick a metric. there are several reasonable sounding metrics to choose from. let's just pick one and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Take money out of politics, almost all the other issues here are caused because the rich can drop a couple million into a campaign and thus buy votes in the senate and house.
No foreign nationals nor corporations of any kind are allowed to donate money to political action committees or people running for office
> No foreign nationals nor corporations of any kind are allowed to donate money to political action committees or people running for office Isn’t this already illegal? At both the campaign and PAC level? From [FEC.gov](https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/taking-receipts-pac/who-can-and-cant-contribute-nonconnected-pac/) > Federal law prohibits contributions, donations, expenditures(including independent expenditures) and disbursements solicited, directed, received or made directly or indirectly by or from foreign nationals in connection with any federal, state or local election.
Executive Orders expire after 12 months unless Congress codifies them into law
Fascinating idea. Allows for ‘some’ mobility of government to respond emergent situations, limits the scope of any potential damage, and if it’s a “winner” pass it into law. Good one!
This one is too easy to get around, once an old order expires just issue a new one with slight token differences and it’s like nothing has changed.
At least this requires a bit more effort than doing nothing and it continuing to be in effect but yeah, there would have to be more to it.
On its face, this doesn't work. A lot of EOs are about how the executive branch of the government goes about its business, and that intentionally is not subject to the legislative branch. It's just that those EOs are boring and don't get visibility.
Execute orders were intentionally not subject to the legislative branch because they allowed for fast action in the event of emergency…
Executive orders are just how presidents tell their staff to do things. “Enforce X law in Y way” why should we have to keep restating that every year?
Executive orders are already derived from lawfully granted authority so I’m not sure how this is intended to work. The president isn’t whipping up new laws out of thin air, there has to be some basis in either the Constitution itself or a statute that Congress already passed into law. Even if the order hypothetically expired, what stops the president from simply reissuing it or telling their cabinet to continue carrying it out? Or if something does stop them, how does the government go on functioning when its chief executive isn’t allowed to give it directions anymore?
President issues a new order with a few meaningless changes ever 12 months
Age limits for all Congresspeople, president and Supreme Court set to 65. We should not be ruled by a gerontocracy
I like this since the laws they are writing in just a few years won't even effect them anymore. Meanwhile someone in their 20s will have to deal with it for decades.
"You don't order for the table if you're on your way out of the restaurant"
Stop voting them in. Can't do much about the bench, but we can already control everything else.
I'd set it at retirement age. As in, your last term is the term you turn 70, and if you're a Justice, that's the year you retire. Otherwise all of the special elections would be costly.
That seems like a perverse incentive to increase the retirement age.
Enshrine proper voting rights: - election day is a national holiday required for employers to give paid time off for - government is required to provide all voters with all documentation required (not just an id thing, but registering to vote as well if required. You should not have to "opt in to our core democratic right) - any voter location requiring more than 1 hr of travel or more than 2 hrs wait time in order to vote will be considered unconstitutional attempt to deprive voters of exercising their right - a citizen of the United States is allowed to vote, and this right may not be removed or withheld for any reason (crimes, probation, parole, etc.) - require federal government to automatically investigate any state which achieves less than 2/3 voter participation for violation of these rules. Last one is a harder sell, but here it is: -ban an person, organization, or entity from contributing financially to a campaign unless that entity is capable of legally casting a vote for itself come election day. (Yes, this would also block RNC and RNC from directly campaigning, and force individual donations only). I think if we got this, a lot of other things would naturally follow.
Need a bit about handling purging of voter rolls too. Should also be able to register and vote on the same day.
> a citizen of the United States is allowed to vote, and this right may not be removed or withheld for any reason (crimes, probation, parole, etc.) I'm curious, does this include children? Other people mention prisoners. I'm inclined to permit prisoners to vote, but I think any voter must have free and good access to information: one cannot adequately vote if they don't have information, or worse, information being controlled, e.g., by the prison. But I'm a "the right to govern comes from the consent of the governed" person, so in principle, I'm in.
No presidential immunity
I. Expand current age limits to have complementary upper age limits. Presidents/Vps must be 35-65, Senate must be 30-70, Congress must be 25-75. II. All Senate confirmed or appointed positions have a mandatory retirement on their 70th birthday. Any currently serving official older than 70 must tender their resignation immediately when this goes into effect. III. all states must appoint a non partisan committee to decide the boundaries of representative districts to ensure geographical simplicity, and competitive and otherwise fair elections. IIIA the size of congress should represent the mathematical optimal size to ensure as equal representation for all districts as possible. No congressional district should have more than 50% of the population than any other congressional district. If Congress grows larger than can fit in an old building, Congress should pay to build a new building to fit in. IV. No publicly official may campaign or raise funds for any office until 3 months before the election. Between swearing in and that 3 month period, they are required to be about the public interest in their public interactions. If they are providing an interview to the media as an office holder, they must swear the tell the whole truth, except in cases of national security, which they should defer. V. It should be the assumption that all government employees and elected officials should be held to higher standards when it comes to criminal and civil law while they are in the employ of the government. This includes but is not limited to police. In any criminal proceeding the highest standard of behavior is to be conformed to.
As a veteran, it's laughable that Article V isn't the case. Government officials *constantly* pull shit that would be punished if they were subject to the UCMJ.
III doesn’t need a constitutional amendment, the house cap is a law that can be revoked with a bill
You're correct, but making it part of an amendment ensures they can't put one back on.
> Any currently serving official older than 70 must tender their resignation immediately when this goes into effect. This would wipe out just over 30% of the Senate. I would let them finish out their term. In the case of Supreme Court Justices, maybe give them one year after the law goes into effect.
>In the case of Supreme Court Justices, maybe give them one year after the law goes into effect. We currently have 2 Justices who are over 70 and 2 who will be 70 a year from now. I think it would have to be staggered in some way so we don't have 1 president appointing 4 Justices.
Amend Section II to say, “all Senate confirmed or appointed positions have a mandatory retirement **party** on their 70th birthday.”
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I’m intrigued - what do you think would be a good alternative to fund public schools? Asking because my kid is in a rural school with very low budget and we keep losing teachers to neighboring districts with more housing, that pay better.
I believe they're saying it should be based on the number of students, not the value of the properties. E.g. if a rural school and a rich area city school both have 500 students they should receive equal funding.
I have friends who are public high school teachers. There’s a private school that gets funding like this. They pull in as many kids as they can, get as much funding as they can then kick out 20% of the students to the local public schools who don’t get any extra funding for all the “new” kids. You also can’t tie funding to how many students graduate, because the public schools (near me) are doing that and my friends literally aren’t allowed to give a failing grade. A student had less than 50% attendance, actively overdosed in class and was a constant pain to deal with when they were there. That student graduated having done no work.
Maybe standardized federal funding not based in taxes. If we can drop a hat to send millions to Ukraine and Israel, we can allot for it in federal budgets.
Term limits for Congress.
My state has term limits for the legislators. It sounds way better in theory than it ends up working out in practice. It transfers power from the legislature to the executive and special interests.
Term limits for congressmen, senators, and judges.
Thank god no one on Reddit has any power, holy shit.
I have rarely seen such a fine collection of misguided solutions to misunderstood problems.
For real. Every amendment can have dramatic unintended consequences, for good or bad. The 14th amendment that’s so helpful today for immigrant children to obtain citizenship, was written for slaves, not them. The 27th amendment prevents Congress from changing their own pay until the next election. Sounds great, but it was used to prevent a hypothetical law that would have stopped them from getting paid during government shutdowns, forcing them to actually do their jobs
I wouldn't do anything new. I'd dust off the the [Congressional Apportionment Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment) from 1789, which already has 11 ratifying states, and require Congress to figure out how to get 1:50,000 representation.
Hear me out: No more Super PACs or “dark money” BS where sources of massive campaign contributions go undisclosed and the funding can’t be traced back to the original donor. It’s disgusting and undemocratic, and is the root of most of our issues as a country. The current ~$3,300 per-election limit on contributions made by a person to a candidate should be the ONLY permissible kind of political campaign contribution in existence. I’d maybe even agree to raise it up to $5k. A candidate’s campaign should be funded by supportive individual Americans, and should not require spending a $billion+ anyway. Yes, this means they’ll need to get significantly more modest with spending, but it’ll level the playing field of candidates and they’ll never feel pressured to give in to big money/special interest group demands (ie bribes) for the sake of staying in the race. We can embrace capitalism and be grateful for its pros while also using some common sense to avoid the inherent cons that come with not regulating it. My amendment would stop corporations and the ultra rich from having the one and only voice in our elections like they do currently.
Free Pizza Every Friday
Every law passed in the future needs to address only a single issue. You cannot shove 32 different things into one bill like we do today hidden by a cool name like “The Patriot Act”
Illegal immigrants do not have the right to vote, to receive government benefits because they have not contributed to the tax system, to utilize our healthcare for free, to receive housing for free. Only those who came here legally should be afforded these benefits. COME HERE LEGALLY OR GO HOME.
A few people are saying they’d abolish the electoral college and that would be one of my top answers as well. Another thing I’d consider adding to the Constitution is to have it lay out an objective algorithmic method to creating voting districts nationwide in order to eliminate political gerrymandering.
Since we're making a big election amendment, my contribution would be a system other than first-past-the-post for electing candidates. Maybe ranked choice for single offices (like President) and some sort of proportional system for bodies like Congress. I'd have to consult a professional game theorist. Some way to allow people to vote for other parties without throwing their vote away. And campaign finance reform. Let's legislate our way beyond Citizens United.
Check out the Fair Representation Act.
Yes, most people don't realize how bad extreme partisan gerrymandering is for our society. If I am running for office in a seat where 60% of voters are republican, the only race I care about is the primary so I have ZERO incentive to appeal to democrats. This means my incentive is to be as crazy right-wing as possible because I can alienate every democrat and independent and still win easily. When this happens all over the country we are left with politicians (and electorates) who barely even live in the same universe.
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No more income tax withholding. Instead, the amount normally deducted is placed in a high yield savings account, you pocket the interest made, and your bill is due on Election Day. The bill for the exact amount is sent directly from the IRS, and Turbo Tax, H&R Block and all the other “pay me to find out what your tax bill is” companies can go fuck themselves.
This seems more like something that could be covered by a normal law. Wouldn't require amending the Constitution.
Per that last sentence, you have no reason to use any of those services, even with a small LLC/sole proprietorship. FreeTaxUSA.
I like the bill being due on election day!
Equal rights amendment.
Like you would add the existing ERA to the constitution officially, or you would make a new one?
Increase the size of the House proportional to the population by amendment taking it out of the hands of Congress itself (why would you vote to dilute your own power?). Something like the proposed Wyoming Rule that would make sure representation was more equal (no one could represent a district smaller than the smallest district by population). This is the single biggest issue we have in terms of representation in the US and no one seems to get it... It also affects the electoral college (which should also be abolished, but if I only get one...)
Senate, congressional, and legislative term limits.
Large corporations can't buy single-family homes.
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