Warrren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:
"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he 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. 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 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.…"Congressional Reform Act of 2011 (a la Warren Buffet)
• No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are (he is) out of office.
• 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.
• Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
• Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
• Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
• Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
• All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen 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.
Note: there is web controversy on whether Buffet asked people to send this out to 20 other people. Whatever.
http://warren-buffett-words-of-wisdom.com/
4 comments:
Actually, this is pretty much bogus.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/28thamendment.asp
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/congressional-reform-act-2011.htm
Besides, if it were to pass, it would be a Tea Party wet dream. Just kill ALL services, because the deficit trumps everything, and we've got to get re-elected, right? (Don't mind about wars and stuff, they're exempted.)
No, I don't think much of this is bogus at all. As far as I can tell, this is an accurate representation of what Buffet said. There are a bunch of Snopes' "mostly false" allegations that refer to things not in the cited quotation. Nothing here about sexual misconduct or student loans. I don't want to spend a lot of time researching, but for example, Senators & Congresspersons do pay into Social Security, but also have '…full coverage under both CSRS and Social Security' (http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30631.pdf). This appears to be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek jab by Buffet at these guys who have steered this country into spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, increasingly ignoring planetary health, trying to shut down health care to its citizens, catering to greedy multi-national corporations, on and on...
Rick,
Snopes, Wikipedia, FactCheck.org, etc. are generally not considered reliable or authoritative sources.
Deficits are the result of artificial bubbles created by the private cartel called the Federal Reserve.
I like it. It has accountability and consequences.
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