Running to represent the citizens of south Maplewood and Woodbury
Double the size of the US House of Representatives and keep the Electoral College
When Congress first met in 1789 each member represented 30,000 people. As the population grew, Congress would reapportion the number of representatives each state had and increase the size of the House as the country added more states and more people. However, they stopped expanding in 1911. At that point, each member represented about 200,000 people. Today, it’s about 750,000.
Because of this, great discrepancies develop. Montana has one representative per 1,050,493 people whereas Rhode Island has one representative per 529,820 people. This is also exasperating the gerrymandering problem and distorting the design of the Electoral College because the number of Electors is based on the number of House members plus 2. This distortion is then causing people to formulate ways around it or move to abolish it. Not expanding the House is creating a cascade of problems.
By doubling the size of the House, we would see these benefits:
Inject new blood into Congress
If we cut the number of staff for each member in half, we will keep the number of people working at the House the same but double the accountability.
Halve the number of people each member needs to hear from and communicate to. This allows members that care to be more responsive to us and it reduces the need to be constantly out raising money. By one measure, it makes it twice as easy for us to get our representative’s attention.
Levels out the potency of each American’s vote for president. Reduces the likelihood of the presidential popular vote being different from the Electoral College vote. A president not winning the popular vote is the largest factor causing people to want to eliminate it. By removing that factor, we increase the likelihood that we keep the Electoral College.
Shared Profit Corporation
Check out my proposal for a new type of corporation that can help fight income inequality without needing government as the middleman.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
Read up on LFTRs a new energy source without some of the downsides of traditional nuclear while reducing carbon emissions.
Expand Where Health Savings Account Cards Can Be Used
Allow individuals to use their HSA cards at any medical provider regardless of network or connection to an insurance company. Count all of this spend against the policy deductible. This will create competition and ease for patients and drive down prices by eliminating the need for complex interactions between patients, providers, and insurance companies for basic care. Most Americans can use HSAs to save up enough money to insulate themselves from the cost of routine or minor medical needs. For low-income people, the government can deposit money into the HSAs which can only be used for medical expenses. This will ultimately cost the government less than it is currently paying and provide better options.
Prevent Pro-Sports Team Owners Holding Fans and Taxpayers Hostage
Normally, I do not want Congress to interfere with state decisions. However, Congress has passed laws benefiting sports leagues already. In return for favorable rules, what have sports teams done? They pit one city and their fans against another city and threaten to move if the host city or state does not build them publicly subsidized stadiums.
States cannot stop this abuse by requiring teams to pay, so it is a place for the US Congress to step in. Congress should draft legislation to require that going forward any public money going toward a stadium project is paid back before the team can relocate to another city. This obligation should be made at the league level, not the team, so that no team can get out of it by declaring bankruptcy.
Political Money Should Not Cross Political Boundaries
Why should California liberals or Texas conservatives help decide who represents us as senator from Minnesota? There is much more to be done to deal with money in politics, but this is a simple and effective rule that would be easily enforceable. For this to have any effect, you would need to ban PACs, but we didn’t always have PACs, they are a recent creation. So why not? It still leaves presidential races as is, but will help everything else. This should at least be enforced at the state line but could be extended to Congressional districts.
Extend Insider Stock Trading Bans to Members of Congress and Regulators
There are laws about this but they are not strong enough. There is no reason for Congress members to be getting rich off of stock trade. They can invest in mutual funds and EFTs. Regulators trading stock in the industries they regulate is a clear conflict of interest.
18 year Term Limits on Supreme Court Justices
This can likely be accomplished through Congressional legislation without a Constitutional Amendment. After 18 years, if they don’t retire they can be reassigned to a district or appellate court. With this framework, a new Supreme Court justice will be nominated every two years. If a justice resigns early, the president will nominate a new justice to fill out only the remaining years of the term. This will help insulate the court from short-term political games.
Article V Convention
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are supremely important but they aren’t perfect or divinely inspired. The founders allowed for multiple ways to change it. In the past, we regularly did so, but we’ve only passed one amendment since 1971. Neglecting this mechanism is both cause and effect of our politics becoming more and more polarized.
80% of Americans want term limits on Congress. Members of Congress pledge to implement them and some even try, so why don’t we get that? Because Congress as a whole is too self-centered to pass them for the sake of the country. But there is another way.
The Constitution allows for the states to call for a convention for the purpose of proposing amendments. Each state would send delegates who would propose an amendment. If the convention passes an amendment, it would still have to be passed by ¾ of state legislatures. This is the same as if Congress had passed the amendment, but it just bypasses Congress.
Because of this, it will not solve or change our most contentious issues. Something blue states like but red states don’t will not get passed because the state legislatures won’t do it. But it will get around Congress. Term limits are the most likely thing to get enacted
.
An Article 5 Convention could address the problem of money buying politicians. 70 – 75% of Americans favor effective campaign finance reform (ie. rules not written by the politicians, which is like the fox guarding the hen house. Politicians made a show of passing reform that just created back doors that made everything worse.) In a 1976 court case, the Supreme Court found that spending money to support candidates is a form of free speech protected by the 1st Amendment. A 2010 case decision found that corporations and unions participate in those 1st Amendment protections. The most direct solution is to pass an amendment to the Constitution to reverse that. I do not believe corporations or labor unions have a fundamental right to influence elections. An amendment could even go further to stipulate how an individual can or can’t use their money in elections (which already happens). Corporations currently have MORE power to influence elections than individuals do. Surely that is not what our founders intended.
Some worry that an Article V convention would completely scrap the Constitution. Technically, it could propose that, but then so could Congress. Yet neither body can actually change the Constitution. They can only propose a change whether large or small, and then ¾ of the states have to actually pass the amendment. I see no more danger in an Article V convention than what currently exists in Congress.
Eliminate National Gas Tax
That’s an attention getting line, but there are multiple different ways this could go. At minimum, being on auto-pilot with this program is not working anymore. The highway trust fund is dead. I initially heard proposals that since the money is sent back to state highway departments to do the work in maintaining our interstate system anyway, and since members of Congress hold the money up in horse-trading and earmarks, we should just leave the money in the states now that the overall interstate system is done being built. If you remove the federal tax, then state taxes can increase their own gas tax and maintain the system inside their state. However, I did not realize how underwater the federal transportation system is.
I don’t agree with all the goals of the author’s organization, but I can work together especially on the “Fix it First” principle. Lawmakers love to take credit for some new big bridge that taxpayers fund, but replacing aging infrastructure is more important. It may not get the headlines, but it’s needed. As for the budget, if we can’t balance the budget on programs that have dedicated streams, how will we ever reduce spending anywhere else. We either need to cut spending, or raise the tax. Now that we can do it, we should allow states to keep the money and cut out the middleman of the federal government.
Related to the gas tax, I oppose any move towards a “vehicle miles traveled” tax. Due to electric vehicles, some drivers avoid the gas tax. This can be made up much more easily by charging a tax on the electricity at charging stations. We need to do what we can to avoid the surveillance creep. We don’t need the government to know where we are at all times, which is already enabled in newer cars but not yet hooked up to a tax-collection system. Just tax the electricity. In addition, the cost to build the infrastructure of tracking the mileage on every car is unwise and unwelcome. Furthermore, a tax based on miles driven does not encourage fuel efficiency.
Our Tax Code Actually Encourages Companies to Fire Workers
We might agree that we can’t stop technological progress and that automation makes workers more productive and therefore allows them to be paid more. But should we actually be giving companies incentives to fire workers and build automation or purchase robot replacements? That is the current state of our tax code due to how we treat capital investment tax deductions vs. the cost of employing each worker. At the very least, human workers deserve a level playing field to compete for their job against a robot.
AI is predicted to create massive unemployment. Others claim it will be no problem, we have always had technology that ends some professions and creates new ones. There is truth in both of those claims. The AI revolution is fundamentally different in at least the speed at which it will cause economic disruption. In order to slow down the speed of disruption which could lead to political revolution in the streets, we should actually give workers a leg up at least in the next decade.
We can do this by ending the “temporary” 100% depreciation bonuses that we give out whenever there is a downturn and instead allow companies to double-expense salaries. If a company’s annual salary expense is $10 million which they deduct from their revenue and don’t have to pay taxes against, allow them to deduct $20 million. This lower tax burden will encourage companies to keep workers on the payroll.
Expose the Sham of the Tax the Rich Debate
Often when we debate taxes at the national level, one side gives the impression they are raising taxes on the rich. But if you are simply raising the income tax, you are raising taxes on the upper middle-class, but not on the most wealthy. The most wealthy don’t pay the income payroll tax that you see on your paystub because they don’t usually take a salary. They own companies, they don’t work for companies. It is true that the richest often end up paying a lower percent in taxes than the middle class, but you won’t change that by raising the income tax rates. You need to have a debate about taxing dividends, closing loopholes, taxing capital gains, or creating a financial securities transaction tax. We should debate which of those taxes are least harmful to the broader economy because you don’t want to drive the wealthy or capital out of the country. The more you tax the more that will happen and you get diminishing returns.
The most wealthy donors to both parties are very happy to have Democrats and Republicans debating the marginal income tax rate – because that takes attention away from the low tax rates that they actually pay. Taxes should not be based on “eat the rich” envy, but taxes are nonetheless necessary. All things being equal, lower taxes are better than higher taxes. But our debt is out of control so we need to lower spending and raise taxes only to the level that does not stop economic growth.
Good Compromise vs Bad Compromise
Some voters want politicians to compromise. Others feel that compromise is a dirty word. The key is whether or not you are making a good compromise and not one that just allows the other side to gain some ground this year, then more ground the next year and so on, instead of all at once.
Another example of bad compromise is how the federal government has gone bankrupt. Democrats generally want to spend more and to their credit, will attempt to raise taxes to pay for the spending. Republicans generally want lower spending and lower taxes. They can’t agree and we end up at a government shutdown. Then they “compromise” and pass HIGHER SPENDING and LOWER TAXES when they should have pulled the opposite levers to get a balanced budget. Instead, they both compromise by giving each other the candy they want vs. eating their vegetables.
I will strive to find compromise that benefits everyone. I will not compromise on things that are fundamentally bad.
Student Debt Forgiveness
Blanket student loan forgiveness is not equitable for people that didn’t go to college and only encourages more increases in the cost of tuition. However, something is wrong with the system when the original principal of a debt starts at $20,000 but then balloons to 5 or 10 times that in some cases. People in that situation should be provided a process to have the extra fees and predatory interest forgiven but still be required to make payments against the original amount borrowed and reasonable interest.
Colleges and universities should be on the hook and carry exposure against the loans their students take. When the risk is all moved onto the students and lenders, the schools have an incentive to raise tuition without guaranteeing the product they deliver is beneficial to students.
Incumbents Must Win by 53%
This one will never happen, but it should. Incumbents have a built-in advantage in elections. They win 95% of the time. Yet their approval rating is in the tank. Let’s level the playing field a bit and make incumbents have to win 53% of the vote, otherwise the next highest votegetter wins.
