Theft at the Public Till
each house)? Additional committees may be needed for capital uses, for redistributive policies, for the interests of the majority and the unborn or unrepresented, and for tax policy. Consider granting the President the line-item veto. Consider creating a special committee to represent the interests of our children -- an interest whose voice is seldom heard through the pressures of “more, more, more” and “now, now, now.” Our government can no longer afford to be a collection of fiefdoms each pursuing an independent goal. Synthesis will require work; work that cannot occur if Congress is occupying itself with its own day-to-day complexity. The rules of Congress are at the heart of this problem. The key to its solution is for the Congress to take a good part of a year off to study change. There is no pressing item of legislation that cannot wait an extra six months or a year. By law, the budget must be considered. Either chamber can declare that its approach to the budget will be to freeze it. Each cabinet department would be allocated the exact same amount as it received in the present fiscal year. For the first time in decades, Cabinet officers would be given the discretion to decide what to do with the funds. Congress would not intervene. Instead, it would focus on fixing the system.
4. Make Elections Work
We need to revitalize public life so that the two-thirds of our citizens who now say they feel alienated or that the polity is not theirs will again be engaged in it. Campaign contributions to members of Congress and state legislatures, speaking fees, and bribes have become so pervasive that in many areas of public policy and on numerous occasions the public interest is ignored as legislators pay off their debts to special interests. Change the na- ture of campaigning in America. Limit the duration of campaigns. Limited duration should eliminate many of the promises and use of personalities in the campaigning. Direct funding of campaigns will eliminate influences and more importantly perceptions of influence. To establish conditions under which elected officials will be able to
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