Blogs by Flo Fitzpatrick
Past Time to Fix Things
3/22/2026 5:17:25 AM
Our government is broken. I have some suggestions for a few changes:
Term limits for Congress. Two terms (that’s 12 years) for Senators. Five terms (that’s 10 years) for Representatives. If a Senator wants to run for the House following their end of term, fine. Vice versa…also fine. Supreme Court Justices…twelve years.
Justices should be chosen by a bipartisan committee made up of constitutional law professors from state-funded universities.
Healthcare and pension packages for members of Congress should be the same as a minimum wage employee of MacDonalds or Costco.
If the government shuts down, members of Congress receive no salary until it opens again.
Cut campaign spending by at least half of the current rate. Then cap it.
Get rid of paid lobbyists.
Let voters write or call members of Congress. If a community wants to send someone to lobby for a particular bill, great. They can foot the bill for the trip with expenses but the folks lobbying do not get paid a salary for their efforts.
Instead of a Commander-in-Chief, a bi-partisan committee of say, three to five high-ranking members of the Armed Forces. If we stick with one commander in chief, part of the eligibility requirements for a president should be a background of at least two years service in the military.
And yeah, that knocks some great folks out of running for president, which is another reason not to put the power of heading the Armed Forces into the hands of one person.
But think about it: If you’re going in for a kidney transplant, do you want the head surgeon to be someone with experience in the operating room or do you want someone whose knowledge of medicine comes from watching old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and Chicago Hope?
A president’s Cabinet should be questioned for suitability by panels made up of whatever department those folks will be heading. So, for example, someone seeking to be head of Health and Human Services would be questioned by heads of hospitals or medical schools. Let a group of public school principals question the person asking to be Secretary of Education. You get the idea.
And, at the VERY least, each member of the Cabinet should have a background in the area they want to manage.
Both impeachment and removal of a president via “25” are currently the equivalent of the fox guarding the hen house. There’s a lot of great political theater, live and in color on your TV or phone, but the result is always the same. Whichever party is in charge will NOT convict the person their party elected. No matter the evidence. We saw it with Clinton and we saw it twice with Trump. Of course, if those term limits were in effect, that might help the process as well!
Take impeachment out of the hands of Congress. Bring back those law professors and have a trial with a real jury made up of other law professors.
Same goes for invoking the health clauses of the 25th Amendment.
As for the 25th Amendment? The LAST people you want deciding whether someone is too ill (mentally or physically) to be president are the folks who count on those Cabinet positions or the V.P. who’d like to be POTUS without that pesky obstacle of an election. Have a bi-partisan panel of doctors who are paid absolutely nothing come together and conduct tests and report their findings to the entire Congress.
Our government is broken.
And the current administration and Congress will do nothing to fix it until people rise and say “Enough! You WORK FOR US!”
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