Constitutional Amendment:
During the first 30 days of a new Congress house members may petition for any act signed into law during the previous Congress be given a re-vote. Any such act receiving a number of requests equal to half the number of house members plus one must be submitted for a re-vote in the House during the second 30 days of the new Congress. No House rules may prevent the re-vote once the requisite number of requests have been submitted. For the law to be overturned the House votes to undo the law must exceed the House votes that previously passed the law, and must be a majority vote.
Any legislation signed into law after October 16th of an election year may be extended one additional Congress under the same rules.
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I have submitted that to the White House petition board to try and get the word out and discussion happening. I am very interested to hear your opinion on the idea. The basic idea is that the House is the only chamber that can reflect the current political will of the people after every election. They are the body where the electorate can decide to change direction with every election. I am not proposing any changes to how laws are passed. I am only looking for a plausible way to let the people stop the government when they stop listening to the people who cast the votes.
For clarification, the ACA passed with 219 votes in the house. Under this Amendment the next congress could have repealed it with 220 votes. If it had passed with 300 votes it would have taken 301 votes to undo it. If a law was passed with less than 50% of the votes then it takes at least 50% + 1 representatives to undo it. If a bill is signed into law on or before October 16th of an election year then the only opportunity to use this power lies with the next congress. A bill signed into law after the 17th and before the next Congress can be stopped with the next Congress or the following one. That prevents a lame duck congress from bypassing the safety net that this provides.
What are your thoughts on this? I think this would be a valuable addition to our Constitution.
I have posted this on the White House petition site in hopes of garnering some attention to the ides. The signatures it has recieved are a testament to the power of that mechanism. If you want to endorse it there you can find it at this link.... http://wh.gov/SHwt Unfortunately you have to create a profile to vote, which in light of this administration's actions toward political opponents is a risky affair.
William Benton
Comments
In response to Papp below...I did not vote for any of this...why I belong to a Tea Party now and am making my voice heard! Am I guilty of neglecting our country and leaving it on auto pilot as was suggested below, yes, but am fully awake now! And very active!
I agree with Morton...we are being attacked on all sides and the sheeple are too stupid to notice...they continue in la-la land...worried about the next reality TV show...or their obamaphone....How about we stick with the Constitution? If it is not in there not one dept in DC legislative or otherwise can pass it ..and SCOTUS needs a lesson in the Constitution.....Congress should be repealing every single one of the thousands of unconstitutional laws on the books..that should keep them busy for 100+ years....Americans forget that the Bolsheviks won their revolution with only 17% of the population supporting it....mass murder was the plan for dissidents....how can Americans think it will be different here??? All our fractionated Constitutional groups must get on the same page and unite. We all have the same goal but 50,000 different names and groups. We need one or 2 leaders to lead...and unite and quickly. The left has been working at this for over 100 years and are very good at disinformation. Names that come to mind quickly are Sheriff Joe Arpaio, St Sen Russel Pearce, Shane Krauser, Jim DeMInt, Allen West, Rep. Michelle Bachman, Rep Matt Salmon Wild Bill of Wildbillfor america, Constitutional Sheriffs of which there are now many...and we organize through them...now..not next year, now. And we ALL get on the same page!
THIS IS GOOD START THINKING ABOUT ACTIONS AND SOLUTIONS.
These sounds very complicated. You should go to a congressional exspert on this matter.
I have never heard of this.
Here is the problem as I see it. The marxist have been working on this a very long time.
Defund it and then repeal it!
repeal obamacare now!
To William Benton:
While reading James Madison, note that at all times his faith was in the people themselves to correct any wrong doing. Every thing he did was to keep the power in the hands of the people and to separate the powers of government.
As Ben Franklin is quoted in the 5,000 Year Leap, the citizens must never over pay their representatives. They must come from the population subjected to the hardships produced by the government and then thrown back into the population where they will suffer any injuries caused by their own tenure, just like the rest of us.
Representation should be a civic duty that is reluctantly accepted and gladly disposed of.
The first thing we should do is reduce their salaries and benefits.
That's how you attract civic minded people instead of just the ambitious.
We are a self governing people that have had a government that was so successful that we aloud it to run on auto pilot. We have given up the civic habits of self-government while those that oppose liberty and freedom have taken over our responsibilities and don't want to give them back.
We are now going to have to take them back, but, we have forgotten how and it is hard.
The one thing that was unimaginable in the time of our forefathers is that the art of politics would breakdown at the local level.
I have complained of this in the past and I don't have a solution for it yet. I can talk to a thousand people all across the country through this web site and others, but, I have no way of contacting the people who are in my local voting district, where it really counts, without going door to door and that means knocking on some 400,000 doors or more. That's a lot of time moving around without any discussion taking place.
We must rally together and reassemble our country as our FOUNDING FATHERS had directed in their penning of the ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF THESE UNITED STATES.
@Ralph Baker, yes, I agree. The point of the Constitution is to limit the power of government. There have been amendments that by their nature do not comply with that philosophy, and as a result have weakened rather than strengthened our government. Weakened because they poison those in power with too much power and begin a downward spiral of self destruction through power greed. We must when amending the Constitution stick to the principle of limiting the powers of government and that will strengthen our nation and allow it to last for generations into eternity.
@Andy Reid, the point of doing this through a Constitutional Amendment is to bypass the current need for the whole mechanism of government to be required to undo bad laws. Once the political lines are drawn the natural gridlock that should have prevented the ACA is not preventing its removal. This cuts past the gridlock, but only for the purpose of undoing actions, not for implementing new things.
@Lou Mndia, this would give the power of that 70% to undo actions they do not agree with. We cannot let a temporary super-majority like we had in 2008/2009 act to permanently change the character of our country and then use the very mechanisms in place to prevent radical change to stop us from undoing the non-sense they voted into law. This would give the power to the American people to say NO! And have the command followed.
@Colleen McLaughlin, unfortunately corruption is a human condition. The best you can do is keep the power of government to a minimum to prevent corruption from having greater inertia than the power to stop it. Where this will help is it makes it possible to hold representatives to a campaign promise; the promise to undo something specific from the previous congress. Once the Representatives realize that if they do something against the will of their constituents they can be replaced by a person with the power to fix the mess, they will need to vote in a fashion closer to the will of those they represent or risk immediate replacement.
Thanks all for the feedback, for sharing this, and for voting for it on the White House site. I have been reading through the federalist papers this weekend and wondering how James Madison would have argued this idea.