Fixing Congress

The first prong of the Relief Valve is Congressional reform. In this episode I dive in and discuss the reforms I believe would best work to alleviate partisan tensions in the United States.

Transcript

Daniel Anthony 0:00

Welcome to the relief valve podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Anthony. Today we're going to talk about congressional reforms and how they fit within our concept of a national relief valve.

Daniel Anthony 0:28 

Before we get started with this week's episode, I want to give a special shout out to my lovely wife. After the episode was published, she gave me she called me and told me that she had really appreciated the episode and really enjoyed it. But she did have one point of criticism. And so I'm going to be taking that into account. Here in the future. She said that while she really enjoyed the episode, and you know, she said all these nice things. She also mentioned that I didn't sound quite like myself, her words were that I, my voice kind of lacked the fire that she's used to hearing, whenever I discuss these kinds of issues. I'm pretty passionate about this stuff. And I talk about it a lot with my friends and family. And you know what I would do and you know how I would fix things. And whenever I talk like that, amongst friends and family, I'm usually pretty, I'm usually just pretty fired up and ready to go. And she mentioned that in the podcast in the first episode, I actually sounded pretty restrained, pretty held back. So it started getting me thinking about why that was. And I think there are two two reasons. The first one is kind of obvious. talking in front of a microphone, while staring at your computer screen is very different. It's a very different interaction than when you're talking with your friends or family or even people you don't know. It's just a very different interaction from a, you know, two way conversation. But the other reason that I think I sounded more restrained less myself, is maybe not so obvious. I'm starting this podcast because I, I want to be the voice of reason, I want to be the voice of reason, and what sometimes feels like a sea of madness, you know, maybe not madness, it could also be a sea of anger, a sea of confusion. But regardless, we're in a very large body of water of negative emotions in our nation. And so part of the reason for me starting this podcast was to kind of be a life preserver for people who want some civility, to return to politics and want some in want to see, you know, critical thinking back in action. And so I so I think that subconsciously, I felt like, you know, I needed to be more restrained in this podcast. Because of that I needed to not quite sound so much like a firebrand because that could put people off because goodness knows, we already have, you know, we have more than enough anger in this country. So that's not what we need right now. That being said, there's a difference between anger, and being fired up being passionate. And I do want my passion to come across and come through in this podcast, because that's who I am. That's why I'm doing this. I've talked about this for, you know, years now. And frankly, for the last year, I've been working on preparing to start this podcast, I would sit alone in my little apartment while I was up at law school. And at night, I would just sit and just kind of scribble out ideas for you know how to fix the country, what would I do, because I got so tired of just reading and watching the news and feeling completely helpless and hopeless. And I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. And so I want to be a voice for all of you, I want to be a voice for everybody who feels this, this you know, impotent rage against the machine that we're, we were seemingly up against. So that being said, I want to be I'm going to be a little bit more off the cuff. From here on out, I'm going to be a little bit more passionate, I'm just gonna be a little bit more myself. Hopefully, that doesn't turn too many of you off. I've been told that I can be a little much over the years. So I'm going to be passionate without being angry. That's pretty much the plan. I'm a devout Christian, I believe in treating others as you want to be treated. I don't believe in name calling I don't believe in in talking about people or to people in a way that I wouldn't want to be talked about or to. At the same time, I'm certainly going to criticize people I'm going to criticize their actions because I do expect that other people whenever I do a poor job, just like with my first podcast, I received criticism, and I'm taking it in stride because I agree with it. And so anyway, I say all that to say that we're going to your My tone is going to shift a little bit I'm going to be a little bit less scripted. I'm going to be a little bit less formal. I'm going to be a little bit more myself. Hopefully that works for everybody, and we'll move forward from there. Okay, so for today we're going to be talking about congressional reform. Now, I know I know that just sounds so exciting and you can't wait to get Get into it. But I promise this probably isn't going to be as dry as you're imagining what I'm talking about congressional reform.

Daniel Anthony 5:06

I mentioned this last week, briefly, but you know, talking about things like term limits, age limits, withholding stocks and bonds from sitting members of Congress, these are necessary steps that we need to take. So the first thing we're going to talk about is term limits. When I'm discussing term limits, of course, I'm talking about this idea that congressmen and women shouldn't be able to stay in office for their entire lives, right? The idea of a career politician to me is antithetical to everything that our republic stands for the idea that you can just sit in the halls of Congress for your entire life, and never actually be a productive citizen outside of that is nauseating. And but beyond it just being nauseating, I think it's unhealthy for the Republic. Remember, what I said at the beginning of this podcast was that today, we're going to be looking at how these concepts of congressional out how these congressional reforms work within this concept of a relief valve. So how would term limits help deescalate pressures of political pressures within our nation? There's really two ways First, by having term limits, you're automatically bringing in new blood every however many years the term limits are, I'm going to propose 12 years, I think that's a nice, easy number for everyone to remember, it gives you two terms as a senator, it gives you six terms as a representative. So let's go with 12 years for now. Well, that means that every 12 years, you're going to get an influx of new senators and have new representatives. And these new people are going to be more likely to compromise and work with one another than the people before them. Why? Because they're less than trenched. They're new, they don't have hostility towards one another. They don't feel this hostility that builds up over the decades whenever you basically hate someone for a long period of time. So you get rid of that albatross of old rivalries and poor sportsmanship that may have been hanging around the necks of the congressmen and women who had been sitting in office for decades. The second way that this helps, though, and the second way that this de escalates political tensions is that by imposing term limits, you're speaking to what I believe is the fundamental principle of most politicians, which is their ego. I think that most people run for political office, because they have large egos, they're coming from the perspective not necessarily a bad ego, but they're coming from this perspective, that they're the ones who have all the answers, and they know how to fix all of this. However, if you don't have a time limit on how long you're going to be sitting in Congress, you are much less likely to feel compelled to move towards the middle to get anything done. Because you know that eventually, your party will take both houses of Congress as well as the presidency. And then, you know, you can pass any legislation you want, there's no urgency to compromise. However, in the situation where there's a 12 year term limit, suddenly you don't have that benefit, right. Like I mentioned, last podcast, over 90% of congressmen and women are reelected, despite the fact that Congress is sitting at a 19% approval rating. So members of Congress know that they're not very popular generally, but they feel very secure in their own seats. And they feel like, oh, I can just wait around. But there's term limits, if there's 12 years that you have to get something done, then you don't have the luxury of waiting for someone to waiting for your party to become fully in power. Right. I mean, that may happen, but it very well may not happen. And so if that's the case, suddenly, you're feeling you're fueled by that very ego that I was talking about a moment ago, to get something done while you have the chance you want to put your name on something, you want to stamp something, you want to be able to look back on your time in office and say, Yes, I was part of that. And so that brings forth this idea that compromise and civility can kind of naturally return to Congress with term limits, because people just want to feed their egos. And they want to know that they matter. They were important while they were in office, no one wants to look back on 12 years and think they did absolutely nothing. So that's the that's the main argument for term limits in my mind. And that's how and that's how term limits fit within this construct of the relief valve. The next reform I wanted to discuss are age caps. I think that age caps for both the House of Representatives and the Senate are great ideas and for the sake of both having a nice round number. And also just in light of the times that we live in. I think there's a strong argument for 70 years old being the oldest age at which you could hold elective office elected office within our legislature. Before we dig too deep into this, I first want to just dismiss something out of hand. This my this argument this reform is not fueled by any kind of anger or hatred for older people for my elders or anything like that many of the many of the smartest people I know and the wisest people I know are of course, in their 60s 70s 80s Right there. These are people who have experienced life and provide wise counsel when needed. So I'm not bashing on old people or the elderly in any way, shape, or form. However, let's look back, Let's wind the clock back to the 17 80s And look at the time, the 1780s and 1790s. And look at the Times surrounding the creation of the Constitution. When the Constitution was being made, the average life expectancy for an American was approximately 35 years old.

Daniel Anthony 10:16 

The founders made it a requirement that you be at least 25 years old to be representative and 30 years old to be a senator. That meant that if you were the average American and you were elected to Congress, as a representative, at the youngest age possible 25, you were no, you were not likely to hold office for more than 10 years. For Senator, you weren't even expected to live out your term, if you are the average American, right, because six years plus 30 years is 36. And the average lifespan was only 35. Given that, it's important to think about the fact that the founding fathers didn't put an age cap in the Constitution, but realize that that probably wasn't because they were so they were just being negligent. It was just that in the times they lived in worrying about someone living being a congressman or being a congress man or a woman into their 70s, or 80s was pretty unfathomable, specifically the woman park but generally is unfathomable that someone would be living that long, and still running for office. So when people argue that well, it's the Founding Fathers one of age caps, they would have put it in there, I don't think so because I just don't think that was really practical reality for them at the time. However, I think it is one for us today. And the arguments for an age cap and how the and how an age cap fits in with fits into this mold of a relief valve that we're talking about. share some similarities with share some similarities with what we were just talking about a moment ago, term limits. Specifically, again, age caps provide an urgency for someone's time in Congress. If you're elected to Congress, when you're 60 years old, then you know, you have 10 years you have 10 years to make a difference. That's important. That's vital, again, what drives a politician is largely his or her ego. And so they'll want to know that they have a legacy that they left in Congress. And since they only have 10 years to do it, or eight years to do it, or five years to do it, they'll feel more inclined to compromise and reach towards the middle so that they can put their name on something. I think that is still very true, especially whenever you consider the fact that most of our members of Congress are very wealthy, and most wealth doesn't accumulate until the latter half of your life, which means that if we continue on this pattern, most congressmen and women aren't going to get elected until they're in their 40s 50s or 60s. Having that 70 year age cap kind of provides that urgency that we talked about when we were talking about term limits. However, it's not just that that's not the only factor that helped that shows that H caps would help provide a de escalation of tensions in our country. H caps would also provide the de escalation because it would they would give us more faith in our government. Generally, I think that whenever people look at their sitting congressman or woman, and they see that they're going into their 70s, and 80s. And they're still clinging on to power. I think that it just generally reduces the faith people feel in their government. Don't get me wrong, they still elect their person, they still reelect their person. But I think that has a lot more to do with the partisan nature of our party politics than it does with the individual. If you asked many people who, within Nancy Pelosi, his district who voted for Nancy Pelosi, most of them are going to come out. So they actually don't really like her. But she's better than the alternative, which would be a Republican. And I think you see that across the board for these older members of Congress is that a lot of times they're not voting for the person they're voting for the party, putting an age cap into congressional putting an age cap on means that party politics can no longer interfere with people's free will of wanting to choose a better candidate, right, because the way the party is system is set up is obviously the primaries favor the incumbent heavily. And it's very, very worrying that we're an incumbent will be dethroned by a primary challenger. So this actually deals with that problem. I feel pretty eloquently by just removing them from the equation after seven years old, and providing a chance for fresh blood to move in and give it their try. So first age caps fit within this concept of early fall because they provide urgency to those elected. They also fit within this idea of early fell off because they provide more faith in our government. And then the third thing that I would argue is that age caps reduce the appearance or likelihood of corruption. You know, this isn't saying this isn't calling anybody out. This isn't saying that, Oh, you know, this member of Congress is corrupt. Generally, what I'm saying is that the longer someone is sitting in power in Congress, the more likely it is that they're going to be suspected of taking lobbyist money and taking foreign money of self dealing. We're going to talk a little bit more about self dealing in a few minutes. But suspicion just arises the longer someone is a politician, especially when someone's a politician and why Washington DC, like I said earlier, I don't think that career politician should be a thing, period. But I especially don't think it should be something thing in DC because people are already very suspicious of DC politicians, that only gets worse, the longer you're sitting there.

Daniel Anthony 15:16

So we've now discussed two areas of reform in term limits and age caps. The last reform I want to address today is what I call stock suspension. I call it that because first, I really liked the alliteration. So it's catchy to me. But also, because it's a pretty accurate term. The reasoning behind this reform proposal is pretty straightforward. This is as much an appearance thing as it is a practical thing. I'm not accusing all members of Congress, or even most members of Congress of insider trading or using their position of power to manipulate the market in their favor. However, it absolutely can look that way. We've seen the issues over the years with Nancy Pelosi, they just continue to reemerge where, you know, it looks like she's voting in the interest of some stock that her husband just bought, or you know, and we've seen this with other members of Congress as well. We need to get away from this. I'm not saying that you have to be poor in order to be a public servant, but the name the word servant is in the title. You're not supposed to get rich off of your time in Congress. And if there's even the appearance of the of impropriety, I think that it needs to be, you know, I think it needs to be quashed right from the outset. So you know, what would I do what I say like, Oh, you have to sell all your stocks and bonds, and you have to move into a mud hut for the next, you know, however many years that you're in office? No, of course not. I would say that the best way to handle this is to say that if you're a member of Congress, you and your immediate family that includes spouse, children, adopted stepchildren, not adopted stepchildren, maybe I'm getting a little too into the weeds there. Sorry, I just took the bar exam. So now I'm just like, super specific on everything anyway. But But you, your spouse, your children, while you're in office can't hold stock. And what happens is, if you are currently you are a shareholder and any number of corporations, what you do is that those shares go into a blind trust, right. And this blind trust would be facilitated by a trustee who would act, you know, who'd be the legal title holder to that stock. And to those bonds, while you're in office, you don't receive any distributions. There's, of course, the issue of well, they still know that they're going to get that money when they come out. So Won't they still be motivated to to act in the interest of their stocks while they're in office? My argument, though, would be that it's, it's very difficult to foresee, you know, how the market is going to play out over a number of years, especially if you know, you're going to be in office for a decade or more, you don't know how the market is going to play out based off of your actions, regardless of what your current intentions are. The danger in allowing members of Congress to hold on to stock while they're in office is that you could go into the you could walk into the Capitol one day and vote for some legislation, and then the very next day, sell some stock that was boosted by that legislation. But you know, if you pass some legislation now that could help your stock, you don't know what that's gonna look like in 10 years, you don't know what that's gonna look like in five years. So I think that the risk is significantly diminished. And I'm trying to walk that, you know, that that line between ensuring, you know, the appearance of fairness and equality, while also not, you know, digging too deep into the rights of individual members of Congress, right, because they are still citizens, and they do have rights. And so we don't want to just take away their property, or force them to sell it right without due process. That doesn't seem fair. So this seemed like a good balancing act, where you put it in a blind trust, it's held for you by this trustee, and basically, just don't do anything with it until you come out. And then it's, you know, given back to you. Now, of course, we do need to talk about how this third reform, how taking away stocks and bonds from incoming members of Congress and their families helps to reduce political tensions. Like I said, this is an appearance thing as much as it is a practical thing. On the practical side, I think it speaks for itself. You don't want Congress members who are self voting, who are self interested voting on legislation, right? Because that's going to reduce, that's going to reduce the amount of legitimate legislation coming out of Congress, that's going to create divisions among people that are unnecessary, because the Congress member may only be voting in their interest while they're, while their constituents are not interested in this legislation or actively hurts them. So if legislation is being passed by Congress, that's bad for most Americans, but it's good, but it's good for Congress. That's of course going to create tension within the country because people are going to want to change things, but they're going to want to stick to their side of their party. And so then that creates that conflict of that conflict of tension where I am not getting I'm not getting the help I need but at the same time, I can't switch parties. So creates tension in that regard. It also creates tension though in, like I said, the, with regard to appearance, right? Because now you have a bunch of I mean, Americans aren't stupid people, right? Talk to talk to anybody.

Daniel Anthony 20:12 

I mean, just talk to anyone and ask them what they think about Congress and think about Congress members. And the vast majority of the average Americans will tell you that they think that Congress is corrupt, that its members are corrupt, that they're only in it for themselves. They're crooks. Right. And, you know, we always, you know, I've seen members of Congress kind of laugh this off in the past on television. So it's like, oh, everyone thinks politicians are corrupt. Now, a lot of people legitimately think that you're stealing from them, and that you're, you know, you're acting in your own best interest, not the best interest of the nation, and this needs to be addressed. A good way to address it would be by giving up the stocks and bonds before you enter office, it instills trust in our public officials, and it makes us realize, okay, well, now we know that that's at least one argument taken away from the anti politician side. Were, that's at least one argument taken away from the anti politician side, we're now you can at least say, well, at least we know that they're not self dealing here, they may have made a stupid choice. They may have voted for something that I don't agree with. But at least we know that they're not corrupt in that regard. And that's important. That's an important. That's I think that's an appearance is just as important as reality when it comes to politics. All right. That's it for today's show. I think there are a few more potential congressional reforms we can discuss in future episodes. But for now, these are the main ones I want to put out. You may have noticed during the episode that I've discussed the what and why, but not really the how that is, I discussed what reforms I thought were necessary and why those reforms are necessary for a de escalation of tensions within our country. But I didn't really talk about how these reforms would be implemented. Rest assured, though, that we will be talking about how these changes can be implemented at a later date. For now, though, we're moving on to the next prong of the relief valve, shifting focus from the National to the local. As with today we'll talk about what that means and why it's needed. And speaking of next episode, I have a few show notes, and I figured it was best to put them here at the end of the episode. From here on out episodes will be published every Tuesday and Thursday morning, at least for the time being we'll see as time goes on if I need to increase or decrease the number episode or move around the order, but for now expect episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays Thursday mornings. You can follow me on Twitter at M Daniel Anthony, you'll easily be able to recognize my profile because I'm the one with an extremely handsome guy in the profile picture. You can also contact me via email at relief valve pc@gmail.com. Feel free to email me if you have any questions, comments or concerns. Last I want to put out the bat signal. You see here at the relief valve podcast. We're looking for guests. If you or someone you know is knowledgeable on or interested in congressional reform, Article Five conventions, national or supply chain economics, National Defense journalism or third party politics in the United States. Please reach out. I plan on having guests frequent the show soon and anyone who wants to talk as welcome. Alright, well, that's all for today. Until next time, this is your fellow citizen Daniel Anthony, signing off.