How to Fix Congress

Warren Buffet tells CNBC that he knows exactly how to end federal deficits!
by Charlie Leck

The following email is going around. It purports to be from a Warren Buffett interview on CNBC. I don’t think it has a tinker’s chance in hell of ever becoming the law of the land, but I sure wouldn’t mind if it did:

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," Buffett told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election".

That was in quotation marks. Then a bunch of other stuff is inserted and the email claims that Buffet wants us to take action on it. Well, here I become more skeptical. I don’t oppose the following ideas but they don’t fact-check as being from Warren Buffett – not according to either Snopes or Fact-Check.com.

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, e-mail, cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure.

Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011:

1) No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're 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/women are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

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. Don't you think it's time?

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!
If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete. You are one of my 20+ Please keep it going. Thanks

Good luck in getting such a constitutional amendment passed by Congress; however, I don’t doubt that, in today’s political climate, most states would indeed ratify it.

Thanks to my email friends (all seven of them) who passed this email on to me.

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