The Long Arm of the Law

The Long Arm of the Law:

My personal definition of the "Long Arm of the Law:"

"No matter how strongly voters feel about the burning issues of the day, the ‘law' (that is, the political establishment) is proficient at using its power and influence (its ‘long arm') to hold We-the-People and the reforms we seek at bay."

In Congress

The Long Arm of the Law is firmly established in Congress. Committee chairs can keep legislation from leaving their committees and moving on for consideration by the full house. It's true that such techniques can be countered, but not easily.

In the Senate, we have the practice (called a “hold”) of individual senators being able to block consideration of legislation. That's right: One single senator can object to the whole Senate considering a bill, and make his objection stick (at least for "a while"). Not to mention the venerable, majority-thwarting, unconstitutional device of the filibuster.

The Long Arm not only reaches out and grabs you (which is the usual meaning of this term) but it also serves to hold things back. The reaching-out-and-grabbing takes the form of concentration camps, which are entirely constitutional by the way (as with Japanese-Americans during WWII). The holding-things-back occurs when reform legislation gets “lost” in committee.

My Vision for a Streamlined Congress

I'm a New Age Abolitionist, in that I advocate abolishing all Congressional committees. Since all Americans are supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, I suggest that all Congressmen should be equal to each other. Forget the Seniority System, since it makes some Congressmen more powerful than others. Why should such an undemocratic state of affairs be allowed to continue?

How a Congress without committees would work: Let's say I'm a Senator, under my proposed system, who wants to pass a new bill into law. It's called Bill XYZ and I (or my staff) wrote it. Since the Senate will have a "Senators only" LAN, I will simply input my bill. Each bill will have an attachment, allowing my fellow senators to cast tentative, non-binding votes on Bill XYZ. This will allow me and my peers to gauge likelihood of passage into law.

A few weeks pass and another senator inputs a competing version of Bill XYZ that she wrote, calling it Bill XYZ.1. This also has an attachment allowing for tentative votes. Bill XYZ.1 is clearly marked to indicate how it differs from the original. In a manner of speaking, this gives each Senator a form of line-item veto or, more accurately, allows for a bill to evolve to a universally-acceptable final draft.

Suppose the vote tally on my version (XYZ) shows that I have the majority necessary for passage. Then I alert my peers that this is so, via "Senators only" e-mail, and that I'm about to formally submit XYZ to a vote. This is all done on-line and this final vote is locked-in electronically. If it passes, it goes on to the House.

Bottom line: No committees to get lost in. No filibuster to get tripped up by. No parliamentary procedural tricks to prevent my colleagues from voting (as Bush II liked to say) "straight up or down."

The Way Things are at Present

One reason for committees is to allow party leadership time to twist arms and make necessary threats. Also, leadership has a chance to "inform" legislators as to which bills are desirable for passage without burdening the lawmaker with having to actually read the text. [Heaven forbid! What are we paying them for?]

However, committees get in the way by creating artificial barriers. Congressmen are notoriously territorial and protective of their committee’s turf, so they tend to “defer” to each other’s “expertise.” But why should there be turfs at all? Again, each Congressman is supposed to be equal to each of his peers, since each was elected by voters who are equal to each other. So why not allow each to be (in effect) a virtual president? The Chief Executive isn’t limited as to what he may or may not address (that’s called “leadership”), and he has ample staff to bring him up to speed. Why impose any (committee) limits on our lawmakers?

Proper Representation

Each Congressman should be expected to intelligently vote on all bills that cross his desk. If he wishes to allow trusted experts or lobbyists to inform his decision-making, fine. That would be his choice. To assist the New Congress in wading through the pros and cons of various bills, I advocate providing lawmakers with an adequate level of research staff and access to outside expertise.

This might end up costing more than our current system, but I maintain: We can't afford not to.

The Hindrance of the Presidency

Sooner or later, we’re going to catch on to the idea that we don’t even really need a President, except to push the button (if necessary) in the event of nuclear war.

Think about this for a moment. How much trouble have we gotten into thinking of one person as being the (well, for lack of a better word) personification of an entire country? It’s not possible, it’s not necessary, and in fact it’s counterproductive and downright polarizing. Look at how divisive that office is: A fierce struggle occurs every four years to re-personify the United States in the person of a newly popular (for the moment, anyway) figure.

If the US insists on having a President at all, I am in favor of Congress voting for one of their own by a simple majority of both houses. In the absence of a simple majority, the interim President would be the Speaker of the House.

The only historic reason for having a Chief Executive was to thwart democracy. We-the-People were never to be trusted. But I maintain: Those days are gone (and if not quite yet gone – let’s show them the door, shall we?). The idea that one man can be (not just can run, but can be) an entire branch of government is ludicrous. One man can thwart the representatives of We-the-People. Why should that be? And why aren’t more people asking that question?

If the President, as thwarter of the popular will, ceased to exist, that would make the Congress the focal point of our lawmaking activity. As it should be. But for that to work, our Congressmen shouldn’t be hamstrung by our archaic and constrictive committee system. Each should stand coequal with his peers and be fully staffed to do the job we expect them to do.

Steven Searle for U.S. President in 2012Founder of The Independent Contractors’ Party

I am the only candidate with a contract: "You wouldn't sell your house without a contract; why give your vote away?"

Contact me at bpa_cinc@yahoo.com