Support a Congressional Reform Act

Dear Public Servant,

With all due respect to you as an individual and with due regard to your elected office, we the people, the citizens and your constituency, the people of this area and of this nation, enlist your fullest attention and effort toward initiating and affecting immediate change to the benefits and terms of the entire legislative branch of the United States.

In our own Declaration of Independence, it is stated that “Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” Rest assured, the items listed here can in no way be equated with the terms of light and transient. The inherent significance of this is amplified when considered alongside the lot you have been appointed to bear as an advocate for the American people in your current elected position.

Public servant, many of the privileges that you and your elected colleagues in Congress have come to perceive as entitlements have become encumbrances to the American people. Consequently, with all prudence, we unwaveringly seek effective change. It is our understanding that our American patriarchs desired a government of citizen statesmen, not career politicians. It is time to restore that intention, and to hold it to the depth of regard that it merits.

We the people, as citizens of the United States, in peaceful cohort, request the immediate adoption of the “Congressional Reform Act of 2013,” which should include, in our fair judgment, nothing less than the following...

1. Tenure/Pension- Members of Congress are paid while in office and will receive NO further compensation when their terms have ended.

2. Participation in Social Security- Members of Congress, past, present, and future, will participate in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund will be moved to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds that would have gone into the Congressional retirement fund will flow into the Social Security system, and members of Congress will participate in this system alongside the rest of the American people.

3. Retirement Benefits- Members of Congress will purchase their own retirement plans, just as the rest of the American citizens do.

4. Pay Raises- Members of Congress will no longer be able to vote for their own pay raises. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 2%.

5. Health Care- Health Care for members of Congress will be changed to align with the costs and benefits allotted to the rest of the American people through the Affordable Care Act.

6. Law Abiding Responsibilities- Members of Congress must equally abide by all of the laws that they impose upon the American people. To this end, Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution must be amended to allow for any member of Congress to be arrested for just cause, even misdemeanor form, equitable to all other American citizens.

7. Term Limits- Members of Congress will not be allowed to serve more than two terms in the House or Senate, whether consecutive or not. Should Congress members serve two terms in either the House or Senate, they may then be allowed to seek election for two terms in the other. No member of Congress shall ever be allowed to serve additional terms by representing a different state or district.

8. Lobbying- No former member of Congress shall be allowed to serve in any capacity as a lobbyist once leaving public office, neither in his own district or state or in another district or state, including the national capital, Washington D.C.

9. Campaign Funding- No member of Congress can receive campaign funds from outside of his area of constituency, save immediate family. A candidate for the House of Representatives, whether incumbent or not, can only receive campaign funds from persons with legal, abiding residence within that district, which shall be defined as 10 months out of the year. A candidate for the U.S. Senate, whether incumbent or not, can only receive campaign funds from persons with legal abiding residence within his state, which shall be defined as 10 months out of the year.

We, your undersigned constituents, do peacefully command attention to the effective reform of Congress as is outlined above.

We submit this in effort to produce results that will greatly benefit all of the citizens of this great country, and to the end of restoring the functions of Congress that are conducive to the restoration of the just practices that our founders intended.