There is one thing that seemingly everyone across the political spectrum seems to be able to agree on: our political system is not working. No matter your flavor of news, there is endless reporting on how things are simply not working. Oddly enough, there are a few solutions that just might actually work, and I want to talk about them today.

An Adversarial System

Arguing between the House of Representatives and the Senate is nothing new. In fact, our governmental system was meant to be adversarial to some degree in the same way as our justice system was meant to be. Before 1923 however, the elections looked a bit different. The populace voted directly for the members of The House of Representatives. This was designed to be the voice of the people. Senators however, were appointed by the State Legislatures, and theirs was the voice of the state. The congressional system was designed to have representatives for the people’s interests and also representatives for the interest of the state, and those two things would clash together and actually govern. The 17th Amendment was what changed things.

Today, it is fairly common to see clashes between state governors and the federal governmental system. How could there not be, when the interests of the state have absolutely no representation in the federal government? States on the boarder say there is a crisis in the number of people crossing the boarder, but all they can do is beg the federal government for help, not actually propose legislation to try and help. States on the coasts say that security is lacking in ocean ports. Same problem. When the interests of the sate are not represented, we are left with a form of populism that our Constitution was designed to prevent. Populism is the bane of any Republic.

By repealing the 17th amendment to the Constitution, we giver the states back their voice in the federal government, we would provide a check against populism, and we would restore the adversarial system that was intended from the beginning.

Legalized Theft

In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. The nation has made few mistakes larger than this in all truth. The 16th amendment allows the federal government to collect income tax from all Americans from any source of income. I am not going to rehash the arguments for and against the income tax, but I will say that just last week, the Supreme court was hearing arguments about this amendment, again, because of sections of the US tax code that were changed under former president Trump.

While many of us enjoy the results of the income tax to some degree, if we look at the how the government has managed it’s resources objectively, there can be no doubt that it is very bad at it. As I am typing this, the current total federal debt is 33.1 trillion dollars. That equates to being 123% of our total national GDP. It does not take an economics major to figure out that if you keep spending more than you have, bad things will come of it. Why can the government spend so recklessly and borrow so much? Because the income tax allows them the collateral to do so. There are ways for the federal government to gather funds when it needs to outside the income tax.

To go along with the 16th amendment, and the income tax, a massive new bureaucracy of course had to be established. The IRS dates back to former president Lincoln and the civil war era, but it was not until the 16th amendment that the agency started to become the massive bureaucracy it is today. In 2022, the IRS spent 14.3 billion dollars while employing over 79,000 full time employees. For some perspective, that is twice the number of employees of the Kraft-Heinz company. The income tax has given the federal government the ability to spend recklessly and needs to be revoked.

Regulatory Hell

Right now, there are approximately 100 regulatory agencies in the federal government. Their power varies from agency to agency of course, but there are still 100 or so of them. 100 agencies comprised of people not elected, that have the ability to, in effect, make law. No, they are not technically laws, but if there is an enforcement mechanism, and penalties for not following what is laid out, it is functionally a law. It is incredibly likely that there are more regulatory agencies, than there are sitting US Senators in all truth.

Numbers can be boring, but they often paint a picture of what is actually going on. An organization called The Competitive Enterprise Institute, tracks regulations and releases an annual report called “The 10,000” commandments. I am going to show some numbers that should frighten you.
1. The conservative estimate of how much federal regulations cost is 1.9 trillion dollars. This is often called a hidden tax. Worth noting is that this number does not include the costs of legal battles surrounding the regulations. That number is larger than all personal and corporate income tax combined. If this were a nation, the GDP would make it the 8th largest on the planet behind Italy, and ahead of Brazil.
2. The estimated household cost of federal regulations is $14,455. That equates to 18% of the pretax average household income. The average income tax burden is 13.3% per household. When you add in state and local sales taxes, property taxes, etc. more than 40% of personal income goes to some form of taxation or regulatory cost on average.
3. In 2019, the last available compiled year, regulatory agencies published 2,964 new regulations. The number of regulations has been tracked since 1976, and this is the first year the number has been under 3,000. Fear not though, they anticipated 3,752 for 2020. For perspective, our elected representatives passed 105 bills into law in 2019. That is 28 regulations, which has the effect of law, for every 1 bill that our elected representation passed into law. Those regulations totaled over 66,000 pages. Remember, this was a slow year.
4. When the annual spending reports of the federal government come out, the cost of regulation is not included as a government expenditure. If you add it in, as it should be, a full 30% of the expenditures of the US government, is spent of government.

Currently, the country is being run by those not elected to do so. This is, at the very least, against the spirit of the representative republic that we are supposed to be. Is it any wonder that things are not running properly? The scope of influence and power of the regulatory machine needs to be eliminated. At best they should be advisory bodies to congress, not their replacement.

It Shouldn’t Be A Career

Our political system was not designed with a permanent political class in mind, rather it was designed so that those elected to represent us were in service to us, and the nation, not making a career decision. Unfortunately, this is not a new development. The Adams family should have been an exception, not a rule. The Adams family produced two sitting presidents, candidates for vice president, for governor, and so on. Just in case you thought that was ancient history, John Donly Adams recently ran for Virginia Attorney General. Yes, he is from that Adams family. The names are well known. Bush, Clinton, Romney, Rockefeller, Roosevelt, Udall, Taft, Harrison, Kennedy, and more. These families have had influence in American politics across generations, but this was not the design. Politics shouldn’t be a business, let alone the family business.

Our current president was elected to his first office in 1970, and his first federal position in 1972. I was born in 1975. That is to long. This isn’t about policies I support, or don’t support, but about the simple reality that if you have been involved in the political machine for 50 years, you have no idea what it is like to be outside of it. You can not effectively govern those whom you do not understand. We desperately need to limit terms of the Senate and the House in the same way that we do the Presidency. After that, there should be at least a decade before former politicians are allowed to work as lobbyists. We need real campaign fiance reform. Right now, political action committees decide elections, not people or policies.

Mandatory Civics

Having a teenage step son has confirmed what I have long thought. There are at least three generations, maybe more, that have no idea how things are supposed to work. People do not know the difference between a true democracy, and the representative republic we are. They have no idea of how government actually is supposed to function. They have no idea about what the responsibilities of American citizenship is supposed to entail. I do not know why we stopped teaching it, but we need to start again.

If we were to do this, we can foster the healthy skepticism of government that is not only ingrained in our national history, but necessary for us to function well instead of the public opinion polls that have come to dominate every decision made. We can embrace dissent being one of the highest forms of patriotism instead of unhealthy caterwauling back and forth. We can foster loyal opposition instead of the divisions we have now.

Conclusion

We have very real problems, and they are actually fairly large. That means that we need big solutions also. These are some of mine…yes some. I haven’t even gotten started on the myth of the two party system. Do any of these things actually happen? Most likely not. Maybe these are answers, maybe they aren’t, but I do know there are answers out there. The real question is will we, the average American citizens, finally realize that we have the power and ability to make changes, we just need to find the will to do so.