Term Limits for Elected Offices

This essay was written in 2012, and is even more relevant today.  The Presidential Election referred to is the 2008 election of Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin.

There has recently been increased interest in Term Limits for elected offices. It has become blatantly obvious to even the rank and file citizenry that career politicians are a large (if not the largest) part of the problem in all levels of government. However, there are several problems with getting from here to ANY semblance of term limits, and in addition there is of course considerable disagreement as to what such limits should be.

At the Federal level, the first problem - how to get there - is a very high hurdle. To begin with, it is virtually inconceivable that any Legislative body is going to cut its own head off by passing term limit legislation. No one is likely to vote himself or herself out of a job, especially one as lucrative and cushy as political office. Since such a vote would have the same effect as firing them, threatening to throw them out has no real clout. Furthermore, at the Federal level, there is no such thing as a referendum that would allow the citizenry to pass term limit legislation, and even if there were, the next bunch of crooks in office would just repeal it. Worse yet, at the Federal level, passing a Constitutional Amendment (which is what is ultimately needed) requires either two thirds of Congress (not gonna happen) or two thirds of the Legislatures of the States (also very unlikely) to propose such an Amendment. And then three fourths of the States must ratify it. Prospects are dim.

Even though hope of such a Constitutional Amendment is vanishingly small, let's take a minute to look at what such Term Limits might be. Most suggestions are for two or three terms, somewhat akin to the two-term limit that was passed for the Presidency. (Note that this Amendment probably was successful only because most of Congress and the State Legislatures had little hope of winning the Presidency.) Some suggestions at the Federal level have been for a fixed time limit, with 12 years (6 terms of the House or 2 terms of the Senate) being the favorite.

Unfortunately, the problem with the career politician is that he (or she) is always running for the next election. The minute that the current election is won, the campaign for the next election is the primary focus for not only most of his time, but for what his vote is going to be for or against any bills that come up. To me, this is the root of the problem. With this in mind, it seems obvious that the proper term limit is ONE.

Even passing a Term Limit Amendment limiting all terms of elected office to one term still leaves a gaping hole. This was blatantly illustrated in the last Presidential election. ALL of the contenders were currently holding office at the time, and most spent the better part of two years campaigning rather than addressing the task they had been elected for. Ironically, since the winner had only just been elected to the Senate in the previous election cycle, he basically reneged on his obligations to his constituents to campaign for a better job. As a blurb that circulated on email suggested, try that on YOUR job.

My proposal for a Constitutional Amendment, albeit probably unattainable, is the following. Since the problem is not only that the career politician sucks off the public teat all his life, but also the fact that he is also constantly campaigning for the next election, there is only one way to end the farce. To wit:

No person shall be eligible to be a candidate for any elected public office while currently holding any elected public office. This restriction shall be in addition to any other qualifications for the particular office.

That oughta 'git 'er done'!

PACKING THE COURT

    To continue with the theme of my most recent post, the 2020 election has highlighted several of the 'glaring faults' of the Constitution. In particular, the current threat of a Biden/Harris / Harris/Biden administration together with the Democrat Party retaking the Senate of adding extra Justices to the Supreme Court is sufficiently likely that they won't even discuss the possibility. Such an action would render the Court an even less useful body than currently exists.

    The Constitution leaves the numerical makeup of the Supreme Court up to Congress. This in itself is not necessarily bad, but safeguards should have been in place to prevent modifications (packing the Court) from being a political tool. It would seem that at the very least, restricting any changes from taking place should be deferred until every seated member of Congress has been subjected to an election and possible replacement. That, together with allowing for such proposed changes to be rescinded in the interim 4 to 6 years would go a long way to frustrating the kind of mischief currently contemplated by the Democrats.

    The phrase in Article III granting Justices tenure during 'good behavior' seems a little lax in that a lifetime appointment too often in modern times means possibly extending into infirmity. Since most Justices are confirmed during middle age, a cap on maximum duration of a couple of decades would seem to be better than waiting for the grim reaper to trigger replacement. Some nonagenarians maintain their wits in spite of their longevity, but all too often some degree of senility sets in. Subjecting the integrity of the Supreme Court to the risk of such possibilities seems unwise.

    The fact is that any system design, subjected to the rigors of implementation and use, inevitably shows signs of faults and omissions that a second attempt might try to correct. However, referring again to Fred Brooks' 1975 book The Mythical Man Month, the risk of such attempts becoming bloated and worse than the original (The Second System Effect) is somewhat evident in the fact that the Constitutional Amendments too often sully the elegance and simplicity of the original document. The author's opinion is that we're running about 50-50 which is probably not bad for almost 250 years.

THE 2020 ELECTION AND THE CONSTITUTION

With all the hoopla surrounding the coming elections (2020), it is interesting to look at what the Constitution had to say about the subject - both the original document (including Amendments 1 to 10), and the remaining Amendments.

It is fairly obvious that the Founders were against creating a Democracy, and in the original document gave the people only a direct vote on their Representatives in the Congressional House. Even then, they kicked the can down the road on the subject of qualification to vote, essentially leaving it up to the States to decide individually. This is just one of several glaring faults in the Constitution. The requirements for qualifying to vote should have been spelled out explicitly and should have been uniform across the country for the Federal election.

The 17th Amendment (one of two in 1913 that set the stage for the downfall of the U.S.) added the Senators to those directly elected by the populace, effectively creating two Houses of Representatives, but with different rules. Again, instead of rectifying the omission in the original with respect to qualifications, they kicked the can down the road once more.

However, with respect to the choosing of the President, the people were not only deprived of direct election by the Electoral College mechanism, but were even denied direct election of the Electoral College Electors. The original document specifies that "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress". Nothing in the remainder of the original document nor in any of the Amendments changes the right of the State Legislatures to appoint the Electors for the Electoral College, although if a State chooses to use a popular election to decide who to appoint, several Amendments have a lot to say as to who may or may not vote in such an election.

Since the Constitution states that "Each State SHALL appoint..." their electors, convene them for their votes, and forward the results to the Senate, one might reasonably assume that such action should be taken in a timely manner. Nothing in the original document or the Amendments suggests that such required actions might be justifiably delayed by an optional popular election at the State level. Thus it is hard to justify the concern that the actual determination of the winner of the Electoral College might not occur at the normal time.

At the same time, there seems to be no real deterrence to any State Legislature appointing their Electors based on any whim they might take, regardless of the results or lack thereof of any popular election, or for that matter, any overreaching dictum from any court. Thus schemes to eliminate the Electoral College and choose the President by the national popular vote are unnecessary - the same result can be achieved within the current Constitution by getting sufficient State Legislatures to agree to appoint their Electors based on that criteria.

This, of course, is just another of the several glaring faults in the Constitution as mentioned above. The Founders apparently hoped that such faults might be corrected by the Amendment procedure provided for, but most Amendments have tended to create more faults rather than correct the original ones (author's opinion). The result seems to lack the 'conceptual integrity' described by Fred Brooks in his classic 'The Mythical Man Month'.

Why The Income Tax Must Go

Rahm Emanuel is known in part for his adage "never let a serious crisis go to waste".  The unprecedented crisis in the United States that the coronavirus COVID-19 has brought upon us may be an opportunity to correct a glaring problem with the U.S. tax structure.

One of the corrections needed in U.S. overall philosophy that most have been made painfully aware of because of the coronavirus is the need to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of critical needs, especially on countries that have overtly stated their hostility to America. The general wisdom on the subject is that it is the greed of large corporations that has led to so much outsourcing of the goods and services that we consume. Where less than a century ago the US was the undisputed leader in production of most goods and services, today we don't even produce much of our medical or military needs. This is insane and dangerous.

The rarely mentioned factor in the impetus for the outsourcing and offshoring of production is the U.S. tax structure. In particular, the Income Tax is a huge contributor to the reason that the American Worker cannot compete with low cost foreign labor. The added costs to every product made in the USA due to income taxes paid by both the worker and the business that he works for make his product less competitive both in the domestic market and in foreign markets. Any superiority in the efficiency and productivity of the American worker is canceled by the income tax burden that must be included in the price of American goods.

There are many ways to view the undesirability of the Income Tax. On the philosophical side, the Income Tax is a tax on productivity and investment, both of which one should want to encourage, not penalize. The Income Tax is a tax on labor, not product, and thus can be viewed as penalizing the American worker relative to not only the foreign worker, but also illegal 'under the table' workers and even automation.

The costs of maintaining the infrastructure that is necessary for the free market to exist in this country is paid by the citizens of the country, but not by foreigners that participate in our markets for nothing. Instead of foreign interests paying their fair share, that cost is shouldered by U.S. citizens, primarily with the Income Tax. and in effect makes their products more expensive in both domestic and foreign markets.

Another downside of the Income Tax is the detrimental effect that it has on business economic decisions. How many times have you heard someone say "I have to consider the tax implications", or "I need a loss". This is magnified by the many special rules that the lobby driven political class has embedded in the tax code. One wonders if the productivity of American businesses wouldn't explode if the stupidities of the Income Tax were purged.

Then there is the problem of whether to tax gross or net income. It's pretty obvious that taxing gross income would be a total disaster, since anyone that was in the business of reselling a product would have to have a markup greater than the tax rate to make any net profit. But that leaves the problem of defining net income, a task beyond mere mortals, and especially those that try. And even if it could be done fairly, it requires massive bookkeeping to compute net income to tax. This bookkeeping burden further adds to the cost to the American producer.

One last indictment of the Income Tax in the U.S. Since we have a fiat currency that our unscrupulous government is inflating at a non-trivial rate, the Income Tax treats any increase in currency based value as a taxable capital gain. Return on investment in the form of interest or dividends are taxed at the marginal rate such that one must get a return of more than the inflation rate plus the tax on that fictitious gain to not be losing value. Inflation and income taxes are not compatible and the one that is worse is the Income Tax.

Instead of taxing and therefore penalizing labor and investment with the Income Tax, it makes much better sense to tax the product with a retail consumption tax. It taxes foreign products at the same rate as domestic products, thus taxing a $30,000 car made in Japan, Mexico or Detroit the same. It has the same effect on foreign goods as a tariff, without the appearance of a punitive penalty. At the same time, the exported domestic goods are not burdened with the US consumption tax and therefore are more competitive in foreign markets.

Thus in the midst of a health and economic disaster Americans have a historic opportunity to at least try to improve their government. The income tax, a treachery so heinous that it required amending the Constitution (the 16th Amendment) to be legal, could be temporarily eliminated. One could further hope that the wisdom of such an improvement was sufficiently apparent to promptly re-amend the Constitution to eliminate the possibility of it reappearing.

The 'Fair Tax' bill (H.R.25 - Fair Tax Act of 2019) does an excellent job of laying out the case for a sales tax to replace the disastrous income tax. But it's not going to happen unless the rank and file citizen becomes sufficiently convinced that it's not only a good thing, but that it's virtually required to avoid an untimely demise of the United States as the world economic leader. One of the unfortunate characteristics of the average American is that his/her response to everything is "what's in it for me". This is despicable, but it is a fact of life that must be faced. Every American needs to study the problem, convince himself that there is something in it for them (unless they're politicians or tax lawyers), and then help get the word out.

The Internet is deluged with jokes and other garbage passing from coast to coast like wildfire. Let's make use of this phenomena to pressure Congress to pass the single most important piece of legislation that's come along since the ill considered stupidity that proposed the 16th Amendment in the first place.