REFORM
North Carolina Legislative and U.S. Congressional Reform
The Congress of the United States has become an overpaid, overstaffed, self-serving institution. It confiscates NC taxpayer funds to finance exorbitant and unconstitutionally determined salaries, pensions and perks. Many NC members of Congress have become more accountable to the Washington Establishment than to the people of NC. Both Houses of Congress are all too often unresponsive and irresponsible, arrogantly placing themselves above the very laws they enact, and beyond the control of the citizens of NC that they have sworn to represent and serve. We, therefore advocate, that any SPNC elected federal officeholder do the following:
1. Abolish Congressional pensions.
2. Abolish federal pay for members of Congress, and restore provisions for per diem allowances.
It is time for the people of NC to renew effective supervision of their employees in public office, to restore right standards, and to take back the government. The US Congress and the NC Legislature/Senate must once again be accountable to the people, and obedient to the US and NC Constitutions, repealing all laws that delegate legislative powers to regulatory agencies, bureaucracies, private organizations, the Federal Reserve Board, international agencies, the President and Governor and both the NC and US judiciary.
The U.S. Constitution, as originally framed in Article I, Section 3, provided for U.S. Senators to be elected by the state legislators. This provided the states direct representation in the legislative branch so as to deter the usurping of powers that are constitutionally reserved to the states or to the people. The Seventeenth Amendment (providing for direct, popular election of U.S. Senators) took away from state governments their constitutional role of indirect participation in the federal legislative process. If we are to see a return to the states of those powers, programs and sources of revenues that the federal government has unconstitutionally taken away, then it is also vital that NC repeal the Seventeenth Amendment and return to the state legislatures the function of electing the U.S. Senate. In doing so, it would return the U.S. Senate to being a body that represents the legislatures of NC, on the federal level and, thus, a tremendously vital part of the designed checks and balances of power that the US Constitution originally provided for will be restored.