Caleb Bryan
One of the rarest political occurrences is the passage and ratification of an amendment. The ratification of an amendment is not as rare as finding an honest politician winning the lottery (one out of 300 million), or being struck by lightning (one out of a million). Still, Congress has proposed nearly 11,000 amendments to our Constitution since 1789 and only 27 have passed. For the past couple of weeks, I have been critical of a couple of our existing amendments. This task has triggered me to think about an amendment I would like to see proposed by our Congress and ratified by our states. If you are unfamiliar with adding an amendment to our Constitution, the framers wrote Article V to give us direction on how to amend (change) the Constitution. There are two ways to amend the Constitution: 1. Two-thirds of Congress or two-thirds of the state legislature can propose an amendment. 2. Three-fourths of the state legislatures or three-fourths of the state ratifying conventions can ratify an amendment.
Huzzah sidebar: The founders' allowing a possible but complex pathway to amend the Constitution is one of the primary reasons why it has survived and earned the title of the "Longest Living Written Constitution in the World." The founders knew that changes would occasionally be needed to keep pace with America's Republic. However, the whims of the people cannot quickly alter the Constitution.
Faux Pas Sidebar: All 13 states were required to ratify an amendment to amend the Articles of Confederation (America's first Constitution). Getting two people to agree on a single issue is hard enough, much less than 13. Therefore, the Articles of Confederation never came close to being ratified. In other words, you had a better chance of winning the lottery twice than seeing an amendment ratified under the Articles of Confederation.
In my hope for a proposed and ratified 28th Amendment, I want to see an amendment that would restructure Congress's salary to be the average income of households in the private sector with a clause that forbids any member or staffer from engaging in insider trading. This is silly and lacks little merit in becoming a reality, but if you humor me and read my reasons, we might find some credibility in this hypothetical proposal.
The average Representative and Senator make $174,000 a year, yet so many members of Congress exit office multi-millionaires. For example, Grace Napolitano, a Representative from California, had a net worth of $8,000 in 2008 and within 10 years, her net worth was $913,000, which is an 11,312.6% increase in net worth. Pete Olsen of Texas had a net worth of $85,514 in 2008. He increased his net worth by 6,524.7% within 10 years of being in the House of Representatives ($5,665,019). For comparison, the average American's income only rose 10% between 2008 and 2018. I am not against paying an individual what they are worth. Still, Congress hit some of its lowest approval ratings during that period (the average was below 20%), including a 9% approval rating in 2013.
If Congress's salary mirrored what the median household made in the private sector and if they were banned from insider trading, it would incentivize our lawmakers to pass legislation on time instead of delaying bills until their assets and investments have been reallocated to monetize off the legislation, which happened repeatedly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Theoretically, there would be a massive decrease in red tape, burdensome regulations, and a desire to see small businesses thrive instead of the few publicly traded within the market. All I am saying is that if it is illegal for professional athletes to bet on games where they might have inside knowledge or can alter the outcome of a game to make it financially lucrative for them, then it should be illegal for professional lawmakers to place bets on the stock market and companies that they have inside knowledge and whose legislation can enrich them because of convenience and not merit. Most of our politicians have forgotten that they are there to provide a service, not self-service. I recall a story of John Adams, who served in our nation's highest office when he and his wife sold some of their furniture to make payments because his law practice suffered while serving the American people in the executive branch.
Due to our politicians' faux pas, we need a 28th Amendment to reign in corruption, curtail the cabal of greed between our federal government, lobbying interest groups and Wall Street, and renegotiate a contract between the federal government and “We The People.”
Caleb Bryan is a resident of Callahan, Florida, and teaches AP US History, Government, and Macroeconomics at West Nassau High School. He can be reached by email at HuzzahorFauxpas@gmail.com.