Can We Even Agree On This?

I received an email from a local grassroots organization today. While their political roots are more liberal, they focus mainly on the effort to clean up government corruption here in New Jersey. Today's email centered on a NJ political activist and former congressional candidate (NJ-4) named Carol Gay. It seems she is proposing an idea which, it struck me, might unite both liberals and conservatives who are sick and tired of a legislative branch which operates above and beyond the very laws which it creates. While couched in the format of an ammendment to the US Constitution, a formidable undertaking to say the least, I can't help thinking that the principle behind it would be one way to promote real "bi-partisanship". The kind that takes place outside of Washington, DC. Here, then, is the idea, lifted from today's email. Perhaps not entirely new but valuable nonetheless:

"For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that Congress members could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn't pay into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered...in all of its' forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come."


Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ".

The letter then goes on to request that readers each send to 20 new recipients (and so on...) as a means of spreading this about the country. A simple question then to those on the right and those on the left, in light of the current state of political war throughout our great land, can we even agree on this?

*** Special note to John Galt of RobbingAmerica, who proposed us sharing each others' blogs via comment to me recently. If you read this, and agree with it in principle, post this idea to your blog and see how your readers react. If you do so, I will be glad to be the strangest of political bedfellows, as they say. And thanks for the compliment. ***

Paul Roth, Jr.