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How to fix our broken government (1 Viewer)

People of all political persuasions are starting to wake up to how big our government has become and it's frightening. I consider myself to be a fiscal conservative but socially liberal, so I don't fit into a neat little label that you may want to place on me. I'm a firm believer in the Constitution and the powers it both declares and takes away from government. But I've reached a point to where enough is enough. The Constitution has been spit on, pissed on, **** on and disregarded for far, far too long. And before any of you think I'm going after this administration and this Congress, think again. The Constitution has been getting trampled and raped since the late 1800's, it's just happening faster now that at any point in my lifetime, and arguably in the history of this country. So rather than point fingers and play the whole "blame game", I have several ideas on how this out of control government can be reigned in and restore the founders' plan for the United States of America. Below is the biggest of my ideas. Do I ever see this happening? No, because why would Senators vote to eliminate their own positions of power? But it needs to happen if we are going to restore our federal government to the limited power that it was intended to have.

Repeal the 17th Amendment

The 17th amendment removes the state's voice in our federal government. Our founders designed the Legislative Branch to have two parts. The House of Representatives was to be the voice of the people and the Senate was to be the voice of the states. This was a built in "check and balance" in the Legislative Branch to prevent the federal government from having too much power. The 17th amendment removed the built-in "check and balance" and now we have a Congress that is intruding into everyone's personal lives on a level that is downright scary. The states' interests are no longer represented in Washington.

In addition to restoring the voice of the states in Washington, repealing the 17th amendment would also help eliminate what I see as the biggest problem facing this country - special interests. Unions, churches, anti-abortion, pro-choice, gay marriage (pro and con), oil companies, etc... would lose a lot of power if the states had their voices back. My hatred for special interests is for a different conversation, but it is destroying our country because it has far too much influence in what is said and done in Washington. Special interests must not be a part of our legislative process. It has to be the voice of the people and the voice of the states, not the voice of money and power.

I also see repealing the 17th amendment as eliminating another issue we currently have - the lack of term limits. If the 17th were repealed and the state feels that their Senators are not representing the best interest of the state, they get replaced. If the people feel that their Representative in the House is not representing their best interest, they get voted out. As it stands now, the states have no say in any of this and this is not the way the system was designed. It has become too corrupt and too powerful. If the people want to keep sending folks like Nancy Pelosi back to Washington every few years, that is their choice. But the states should have the right to fire folks like Harry Reid when their views do not represent the views of the state.
 
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I don't see how repealing the 17th amendment will help. Repeal will put Article 1 section 2 into effect which is what the 17th amendment updated. Wouldn't it be better to amend the 17th amendment instead of repealing it?
 
Repealing it would put Article I Section 3 into effect. The 17th relates to the Senate, not the House. Article I Section 2 pertains to the House.
 
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If you are who I think you are then you know this is one of the things we agree on. Not to mention it might get the state governors hands out of the federal government too. If the states want to take a stand then they will have their Senator as their voice.
 
Welcome Nacas and yes, I am who you think I am.
 
I feel the 16th amendment is what really allowed the federal government to avoid the states' rights issue and to do whatever it wants. Money is power. Once you have the money you can bribe states into doing whatever you feel. I suggest reading Frank Chodorov's "The Income Tax: Root of all Evil." It's a short read but very enlightening.

The Income Tax: Root of all Evil, by Frank Chodorov - - Mises Institute
 
I agree- no to the imperial congress!
 
I 100% agree with the repeal of the 17th amendment. I found this great article explaining how it could be done, quite easily, as it was unconstitutional to begin with (at first I thought it was bogus under the assumption that a constitutional amendment can't be unconstitutional as it is an amendment TO the constitution). To change the system of 'how to elect senators' is perhaps the ONLY situation which would need 100% states to approve per the constitution. They only got 80%. Which means it should never have been passed and could easily be repealed. check out the article:

Magic Bullet to Kill the 17th Amendment, Sunday, May 09, 2010
 
absolutely do not agree with the repeal of the 17th amendment. There are 50 states in this nation and no matter how small, our how large the state is, there should be an intellectual equal say in our government works.
Our government is failing because we are failing. We are failing to stand up to our government. We are failing to educate ourselves about this government. We are falling within our states to support our citizenry and diverting to much power to our federal government.
We should not start ripping up the work of art that has been the beacon of light for governments throughout the world. We should stand up on a local and state level and take more of the responsibilities that have been abdicated to the federal government.
If special interest had to influence every state senator instead of every federal senator to get things accomplished, it would be more difficult to do so. If they had to influence local politicians instead of state politicians, the task would become more difficult yet again.
We have the ability to communicate and get news in near real time, we look at every problem to be solved at a national level and most problems are not nationalized. As long as we want our Federal government to become bigger and more powerful, we will continue to have horrible government.
 
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