How to fix Congress; Is this real or fake?

[aj_cd]

IS this real or fake? I got this from my sil who is having awful time with very ill husband who is retired military. He is suffering from exposure to Agent orange. Long story, but they both feel very betrayed by military, government, etc.
She says it is grass roots effort. I can't find anything else about it.



Congressional Reform Act of 2011


1. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are 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 of CPI 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 are void effective 1/1/12.
The American people did not make these contracts with Congressmen. Congress made all these contracts for themselves.

8. Two terms just like the President
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term, then go home and back to work.



This is bipartisan.
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, before e-mail,etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

I'm asking everyone to forward this to a minimum of twenty people on their address list.
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people in the U.S.to receive the message.

[AlabamaLibrul]

1. No offense but the first two google results on "Congressional Reform Act of 2011"

are Factcheck and Snopes saying it's BS.

A similar version goes as far back as 2 years ago.

[aj_cd]

2. Thank you

NO offense taken, It made sense to me but I did not know. I have awful time finding things on searches. So I took chance to ask here. I knew someone would know.

[AlabamaLibrul]

3. Welcome to DU....

Where hordes of world-class researchers are always available.

:hi:

[aj_cd]

4. Tks, I love it here.

I read here often. And am amazed at things I don't know. So many here seem to know so much. I don't think I will ever get to 1000 posts. But I love reading and learning. I am life long Dem and don't find many like me in my world so this place is good for me.

[Angry Dragon]

5. I would change #4 a little

The people should vote on a pay raise for congress
either nation wide or each state can vote for the pay of their senators and
each district could vote on pay for their district
so the people would decide how much their elected officials are worth

[Sherman A1]

6. You want to fix Congress... It's simple

public financing of all elections.

Game Over.

[Meldread]

7. I don't really understand the fascination with Congressional pay.

First, the problems facing our government have absolutely nothing to do with how much or how Congress is paid. It's a result of the media and money controlling politics. If one, or preferably both, of these things are fixed then most of the issues we're facing with our government will iron itself out. We could go further, but these two issues account for 75% of the problems.

Second, I WANT our public servants to be paid well. Why? Many reasons, but primarily because as things stand now most people who enter national public office are already rich. They probably don't need the money, but I figure if you're going to serve the country by running for elected office, you should at least be paid well - and ideally, this also cuts down on bribes. For those few who ARE NOT rich, it increases the likelihood that they will take bribes because they have more to gain by doing so. Finally, I like to believe that someday the issues with money in politics will be solved, and thus non-wealthy people could also run for national office and (gasp!) get elected as well. Ideally, those people would be intelligent and suited to hold the office, and if this is the case it means that they could most likely work somewhere else and get paid much more.

Personally, I think more people need to run for elected office. Too many candidates run unopposed in both primaries and general elections. I'd like to see some major overhauls to change that, and one way to do it is to make being an elected official EXTREMELY attractive financially.

[sfpcjock]

8. Too good

They offered dioxin to America's finest, and 10 times the correct dose of it. And, death to my best friend at 27 for the transgression of having a 1 in 30,000 illness called Wilson's Disease that would be treated in the pool. It was better to have a corruption of fantastically, almost unbelieveably profitable private "health insurance". That was better.

http://MichaelWieser.blogspot.com

[jmowreader]

9. The Republicans don't REALLY want number six...

If that was in place, Eric Cantor would have his hands around a sledgehammer breaking rocks at the local federal pen, because his short position in Treasuries while he's trying to force them into default violates several securities laws.