A majority thinks that it is time for Congressional term limits

August 5, 2025

It isn’t a new thing, but there is a lot of talk about term limits for members of Congress. The topic of term limits for federal office holders has been around since our nation was founded. In fact, the first controlling document, the Articles of Confederation, did address term limits for Congress.

However, the Founders decided during the Constitutional Convention not to include that in the Constitution.

Back in the early days, Congress was not looked at as, and was not supposed to be, a career. You were elected, you served a while, and then went back to your previous non-congressional job. There were definitely fewer, or perhaps no, 20-year or more congressional members in the early decades.

Currently, despite several attempts through the years to impose term limits via a constitutional amendment, the efforts were never popular enough to generate the two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress to produce an amendment.

Some states have tried to put term limits on their Representatives and Senators, but the courts have struck down all of those efforts. And, the Supreme Court has ruled that only a constitutional amendment can put term limits in place.

Currently, a majority of Americans do favor term limits for members of Congress, according to polls. The U.S. Term Limits (USTL) website notes the following: “Term Limits is known as the largest grassroots movement in American history, and US Term Limits was, and still is, the leader of that movement.”

Three reasons are often cited favoring term limits:
* Term limits could lead to more frequent changes in congressional personnel, and this could bring new and different ideas.
* As their time in Congress increases, some members lose their focus, become comfortable, and do not respond well to constituents.
* Over time, some members may also develop relationships with special interests and lobbyists, and this may change what they think is important.

Another element that has people favoring term limits is the number of members who have become much wealthier during their time in Congress. This includes members from both major parties, and others, as well.

And, of course, there are reasons cited for not imposing term limits. One is that over time, members gain valuable experience and institutional knowledge. Another is that rookie members may be more susceptible to lobbying and special interest efforts. The experience that members gain over time enables them to deal more effectively with passing complicated legislation, and if there is a large number of newer members, that could be a problem.

Then there is the question of what limits should be imposed. The USTL website provides this idea: “Currently, Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas are sponsoring the USTL amendment on Capitol Hill. It calls for a three-term (six year) limit on representatives and a two-term (12 year) limit on senators.” 

This might be the best solution, but some problems could result from it. First, House members can only serve half as many years as those in the Senate. And, if a person is elected to the House and serves two terms, or four years, can that person then run for one or two six-year terms in the Senate? 

Or, the other side: A one-term senator decides to leave and run for the House. Would he or she be eligible for any House terms?

Perhaps a better system would be a limit for the same number of years for all those who serve in Congress, regardless of whether they serve in one house, or both of them. Maybe a total of 12 years in one or both. Or perhaps 12 years is too long. Then, adjust the Senate term to four years, and make eight years the limit.

There is the question of whether current members of Congress will vote to approve an amendment to the Constitution that will limit their length of service.

However, even if members of Congress refuse to pass term limits on themselves, there is another method for getting the job done. A Term Limits Convention can be called to write and pass a constitutional amendment. This process bypasses the Washington roadblock, and allows we the people, and the states, to impose congressional term limits.

To call the Term Limits Convention, the state legislatures in 34 of the 50 states will have to vote for it. That could be difficult, however, given the strong feeling for term limits among the people, it will likely be less difficult than getting both houses of Congress to agree.

There are undoubtedly some or many members of Congress who have served many years and done the job as expected. Maybe one of them is your Representative or Senator. But again, Congress is not supposed to be a career.

One of the nation’s major problems today is that over the decades since its formation, some of the original ideals that made the United States of America a one-of-a-kind nation with a superior system of government have gradually been forgotten, changed, or replaced. Moving back to the way Congress was originally designed to work will be a beneficial step toward restoring the original design.

Taking a step to restoring common sense to the legislative process

December 6, 2022

There are problems with the Congressional process of writing legislation. This process should be simple and straight-forward: if a representative or senator has a proposal he or she believes would benefit the country, it should be written up in the appropriate manner and submitted for consideration.

Usually, this would take several pages, but not hundreds of pages, as some bills do. It also would not involve some number of items added to a bill that are not related to the stated purpose of the bill.

These days we find proposed legislation of hundreds and hundreds of pages and many additional items, some or most of which do not relate to the bill’s purpose.

Unrelated items that are included are designed to serve other purposes. They frequently are used to benefit some particular special interest group or a political purpose that the proponent seeks to help by adding items to the bill that have nothing to do with its stated purpose. 

The authors believe these little goodies will slide through because the main purpose of the bill is a good one, and anyone who doesn’t vote for it will suffer bad press and political negatives for opposing it. If each of these items were required to be in a bill of their own, this tactic would be rendered useless, and legislation that achieves approval would be much cleaner, more appropriate, and less harmful.

Sometimes a bill is so long that in the busy atmosphere of legislative work some representatives and senators simply cannot read every word and effectively study the bill in the amount of time allotted before a vote is scheduled. They then are only partially prepared to cast a knowledgeable vote.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Representative from California whose tenure as Speaker of the House blessedly ends with the 117th Congress on December 31, once said something to the effect of, “we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it.”

No, that isn’t the way a democratic republic passes legislation.

Republican Representative Morgan Griffith represents Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District, which covers 19 counties completely, and parts of three others, and is the Congressman for our region of the Commonwealth.

In one of his regular emails to his constituents, titled “Return to the Basics,” Griffith cites the need for changes, and says with the control of the House of Representatives moving to the Republican Party in the 118th Congress, it is time to make needed changes to the Rules of the House.

Of his suggestions, he wrote, “Most of these amendments restore old rules or clarify existing rules. It would mean a return to the basics of parliamentary procedure.” And, he recently testified before the House Rules Committee to offer those amendments to the rules.

He suggested restoring the Holman Rule, which was created in 1876. It was a tool that could cut government spending.

“One of my proposed rules changes is to restore the Holman Rule, which existed for more than 100 years,” he wrote. “[T]he Holman Rule was created by Congressman William Holman … [who] thought spending was out of control.”

“The Holman Rule allows representatives to offer retrenchment amendments on the floor of the House of Representatives to appropriations bills,” Griffith wrote. “Retrenchment means these amendments could rearrange an agency or department of the Federal Government to cut specific programs, positions, or salaries. In 2017, I revived this rule for the 115th Congress, but in 2019 Speaker Pelosi dismantled this tool,” he wrote.

He also suggested a change to the germaneness rule, that would only allow amendments to a bill that pertained to the bill’s purpose, and suggested that a bill could only have one purpose. He also suggested that those limitations could not be waived without a two-thirds vote of the House.

“Shouldn’t a bill address one issue and be straight forward,” he asked? “My single purpose rule would make it so. This rule would still allow for complex bills like an infrastructure bill. However, two bills or concepts could not be combined into a single bill unless their purposes were the same. For example, a bill to set doctors’ reimbursement rates under Medicare could not be amended into a rewrite of Medicare. To rewrite Medicare would require a separate bill.”

“Additionally, I proposed an amendment to set time limits for bill introduction. This would focus individual members on bills that the members are most passionate about,” Griffith wrote. “It would also reduce the practice of introducing a bill on the cause celebre of the day for publicity purposes,” and “allows a remedy for bills that are ‘truly’ important by giving members the ability to ask the House for permission to introduce their ‘vital’ bill late.”

These common-sense ideas, and others included in Griffith’s email, would go a long way to restoring the legislative process to a form that is straight forward, efficient, and offers more protection from political manipulation than the current process. As he wrote, “a return to the basics of parliamentary procedure.”

Is it too much to hope that a majority of House members will agree with these good ideas, and vote to adopt them?

Big tech silences conservative voices as House concerned with pronouns

Published Jan. 19, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and chairman of the House Rules Committee Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., announced a resolution recently intended to “honor all gender identities” by modifying pronouns in the House rules and references to family relations, such as father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, as reported by the Daily Caller. These words would be changed to “parent, child, sibling, spouse, or parent-in-law,” the resolution said.

The announcement said that hereafter “pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules [will] be gender-neutral,” and removes references to gender, “to ensure we are inclusive of all Members, Delegates, Resident Commissioners and their families – including those who are nonbinary.” 

“Nonbinary” is the term that is applied to those who see themselves as neither female nor male. The changes also mandate that extended family members, such as an aunt or uncle, would be referred to as “child’s parent.”

Not long after announcing these critically important changes in allowable language, Pelosi’s Twitter profile still reads: “Speaker of the House, focused on strengthening America’s middle class and creating jobs; mother, grandmother, dark chocolate connoisseur.”

Given the COVID pandemic, which we are told has taken the lives of nearly 400,000 Americans; the new impeachment effort of Congressional Democrats days before President Donald Trump’s term ends; the riot at the Capitol two weeks ago; and the inauguration of the new president coming up tomorrow, one might expect there to be much more important things for the House of Representatives to busy itself with than a politically correct remaking of acceptable gender language in the House. If so, one would be wrong.

* * *

Tech giants Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Google have grown too big for their britches. Protected from repercussions of what participants post on their sites by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, these platforms have rushed past these protections into the unprotected land of publishers, just as are newspapers and magazines.

Problems arose when people and other platforms were shut down or otherwise punished by these Big Tech firms. They turned out to be primarily, or perhaps entirely, those expressing conservative ideas.

Having had their voices silenced by Twitter, some users then migrated to a new platform named “Parler.” These mistreated users were then followed by millions of others who were angered by the censorious stuffed-shirts of Twitter.

Similar actions have been taken by Facebook and Internet site host Amazon AWS and search engine and Web host Google. Parler has since been banished by Amazon for having dared to allow free speech.

By their actions of selectively deciding who can post on their site, or who can have a site hosted by them, these platforms have abandoned the protections of Section 230, and become publishers. They are not the nation’s Internet babysitters; they are not in charge of protecting the masses from ideas that do not fit the narrow range of thought they find acceptable.

These harmful acts are not immune to negative consequences. Twitter has been punished for suspending President Donald Trump’s accounts.

Politico Daily reported that “Twitter’s stock price fell by 12 percent and erased $5 billion from its market capitalization after choosing to delete an account that had about 88 million followers. The stock dropped as low as $45.17 per share,” from its high of $52.44.

The report added that “the stock fell after people saw the decision as one that was politically motivated and a way to silence a major conservative voice among the public. This also erodes interest in social media platforms that look to censor free speech.” 

* * *

President- elect Joe Biden deserves congratulations and the admiration of us all. He masterfully engineered and operated a plan to get himself elected in November, overcoming great odds. Biden’s win is truly historic.

As someone not leading the pack when the nomination race began, he managed to get the nomination. And then the really surprising win occurred.

His incumbent opponent, President Donald Trump, earned 74,111,419 votes, which was 11,126,594 more votes than he got in the 2016 election. Incumbents usually win a second term, and the last time one did not was George H.W. Bush in 1992. An incumbent losing has only occurred 4 other times in the last 100 years.

Biden’s vote total of 81,009,468 was the most ever for a presidential election, and roughly 18 million more votes than Barack Obama, a very popular Democrat, received in 2012.

In winning election, Biden beat the odds to win over an incumbent president, and at the same time increase the number of people who voted by a significant number.

In 2012 more than 129 million voted. In 2016, 137.5 million people voted, six percent more than four years earlier. And in 2020, there were more than 159 million voters, and the number of voters increased by nearly 16 percent. Wow!

He also won despite losing most bellwether counties, and significant Democrat losses down ballot. 

And, Biden was able to win even though officials in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin broke their own state laws and breached the terms of the U.S. Constitution governing elections when they changed election procedures improperly.

This election is certainly one for the books.

The stubborn and dominant “I” words: Impeachment and Immigration

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., uses the term “Formal Impeachment Inquiry” to describe the political exercise which currently consumes House Democrats. However, a cursory analysis of what is happening shows Pelosi’s term is incorrect.

Two House committees, the Committee on the Judiciary and the Intelligence Committee, are involved in this exercise, but the whole House has not voted to initiate a “Formal Impeachment Inquiry.” Thus, there isn’t one. 

What we have instead is a “Democrat Impeachment Extravaganza.” This term does not appear in the U.S. Constitution, nor in any House document, but it accurately describes reality. Technically, the House is holding a “legislative investigation,” and nothing more.

Recognizing the true state of what is taking place in the House, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said, in essence, that the White House will not be providing any documents or information requested by the committees, since the investigation has not been formalized by a vote by the full House. 

The White House and others who do not share the impeachment fervor see this as purely partisan theater. As things stand, with Democrats in the majority in the House, Democrats control what goes on. Republicans can do little more than watch.

An actual formal impeachment process would be conducted by only one committee, the House Committee on the Judiciary.

The Lawfare website explains: “The impeachment proceedings against both Presidents [Richard] Nixon and [Bill] Clinton began with a vote by the full House of Representatives directing the judiciary committee ‘to investigate fully and completely whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach’ the president in question. In both cases, the resolution granted several specific powers to the committee for it to use in the course of completing the investigation with which it was charged by the full House.”

With this legislative investigation, only the majority party issues subpoenas and calls witnesses, but in actual formal inquiries “the Nixon and Clinton resolutions allowed subpoenas to be issued by the chairman and the ranking minority member ‘acting jointly.’ If either declined to act, the individual proposing the subpoena could issue it alone unless the other requested the issue be referred to the full committee for a vote,” according to Lawfare.

A 1998 report from the judiciary committee accompanying the authorizing resolution noted that “this approach balances ‘maximum flexibility and bipartisanship,’ both of which are lacking in the current investigation.

However, there is a reason why Pelosi and her party have not formalized the investigation: There are heavy risks involved.

By having members vote on a formal inquiry, newly elected Democrat members from states Donald Trump carried in 2016 would be shown in opposition to their constituents, risking their reelection in 2020, and perhaps turning the House over to a Republican majority. Or, they may vote against impeachment to protect their reelection, and put the impeachment inquiry in jeopardy. A positive vote also would provide Republicans some equality in the investigation process.

Those possibilities are unacceptable to House Democrats. They cannot afford to lose any element of control over this political exercise.

Showing how far back the impeachment obsession got started, on January 17, 2017 — three days before Trump was sworn in — California Democrat Maxine Waters suggested he should be impeached.

Since impeaching Trump likely will not lead to removing him from office, Democrats will keep throwing out accusations without proving them, hoping to weaken his support enough for the Democrat candidate to prevail in the 2020 election. Which means another year of investigation, and no legislation.

* * *

The way some Americans view the issues relating to immigration defies understanding. People generally want to protect their home and possessions. They don’t allow just anyone to come into their home, or invite just anyone to avail themselves of the goodies they have, give them money, or other desirable things. They don’t leave the doors and windows of their home open or unlocked 24-hours a day, unless they live in a place protected by a wall, security guards, or both.

But for some reason, many of our fellow Americans support doing such things to their country, by opposing immigration policies and providing incentives for illegal entry.

Some argue that “it’s not the same thing.” But why isn’t protecting the country and its citizens equal to protecting your family and your possessions?

Why would any true American:

·      not insist that all people wanting to come to the United States follow the long-established legal process for entry into America?

·      think it is wrong or unnecessary to control our borders by all means available and prevent illegal entry, by anybody, good or bad?

·      not understand that people who come here illegally are not deserving of any type of assistance from government at any level, short of very limited emergency assistance?

·      not oppose the things the country does that encourage illegal entry?

·      not want illegals deported?

·      want to defend criminal illegals and shield them from legal disposition, when defending illegal immigration puts Americans’ safety in jeopardy?

·      turn a blind eye to, or condone sanctuary jurisdictions which invite and protect people who have willingly entered the country, or deliberately over-stayed their visa? 

Stacking the Court and term limits for Congress?

Columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. brought forth a truly important topic recently. “Permit me a question to every truly fair-minded person in our country,” the piece began. “Imagine that one party packs the Supreme Court with ideologues and the other party does absolutely nothing in response. Isn't this abject surrender to an unscrupulous power grab?”

He’s absolutely right: how can they, and we, just sit by and watch as this terribly un-American process goes forward? How can we allow justices to take the bench and act to impose their own political will on the country?

“This inquiry can no longer be ducked. Even those in the deepest denial can no longer ignore Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's nakedly political aim of cramming the Supreme Court with justices who will undo more than seven decades of precedent,” Dionne continued.

When interpretations of constitutional principles and laws become fluid, we find our national stability afloat in a sea of the unknown. What may be a popular view today may become the opposite in ten or so years. Constitutional interpretations that change with the tides of society are not a reliable foundation. The nation requires stability to endure.

And then Dionne wrote this: “They'll do the bidding of corporate interests, undercut voting rights and empower billionaires to buy elections.”

What he is suggesting is that Republicans want to pack the Court with conservative justices who will do Republicans’ bidding.

However, when applied to judicial matters and judges, the term “conservative” does not carry a political context. It refers to the inclination of judicial conservatives to interpret Constitutional and legal language as it was understood when created. On the other hand, “liberal,” when applied to Constitutional and judicial matters, means that judges’ interpretations of such issues matches the political left’s current preferences, rather than original intent.

Dionne accuses Republicans of doing what Democrats do: trying to stack the Court with ideologues. But the ideology of conservative judges is to stay true to original principles, not to interpret them colored by the changing standards of the times. Stacking the Court with people who hew to the original principles the Founders deemed critical to a successful nation is something to be supported, not criticized.

If the Constitution or laws really need to be changed, there is a process for that, and that process is not stacking the court with justices whose legal judgment will flap in the wind.

To improvement the method of selecting Supreme Court Justices, Dionne endorses the idea advanced by Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, and supported by other Democrat candidates.

“It would involve enlarging the court to 15 members, with five justices chosen by each party and the last five picked unanimously by those 10 from the lower courts.”

So, improve a system into which politics sometimes creeps with a system that is largely based on politics that would increase the size of the Court by 67 percent?

* * *

Criticism of Congressional “lifers” is nothing new. Even though their voters select members of the Senate and House of Representatives, the Founders did not envision those positions as life-long careers. Their idea was to seek election to the House, or – before the 17^th Amendment to the Constitution was approved in 1913 – be selected by a state legislature for the Senate, spend a few years there and return to your previous vocation.

From 1789 to the mid-1870s the average length of service of members of the House was 2 to 3 years, and for the Senate it was a bit more than 4 years. Then things changed.

When “careerism” peaked in 2007, House members averaged 10 years and Senate members averaged 13 years. While the average in both houses has fallen to seven and 10 years, respectively, there are still many members of Congress who have made it a career.

Data from rollcall.com for 2015 listed 79 members of Congress who had been there for at least 20 years and 16 who had been there for at least 30 years.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal., has been there since 1987, while House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Cal., has been there since 2007.

On the Senate side, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. was first elected in 1984, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., first elected to Congress in 1981.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Republican Rep. Francis Rooney have proposed an amendment that would impose term limits on members of Congress, as reported by the Independent Journal Review.

“For too long, members of Congress have abused their power and ignored the will of the American people,” Cruz said. “Term limits on members of Congress offer a solution to the brokenness we see in Washington, D.C. It is long past time for Congress to hold itself accountable. I urge my colleagues to submit this constitutional amendment to the states for speedy ratification.”

The amendment would put a limit of two six-year terms on senators and three two-year terms on representatives. In order for the amendment to take affect it must pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote, and then be ratified by 38 states.

Will our elected representatives vote to limit their terms?

Celebrate the good that’s happening and fix the country’s problems

That President Donald Trump has many critics is no surprise. That he has created much of the negative feelings people have for him is also no surprise. One interesting question is, “how much of the anti-Trump fervor is legitimate opposition to his agenda, or a true belief that he is unsuited for the job, and how much is just an emotional reaction to his personal behavior?”

His pugnacious style, attacking those who criticize him, and fighting back against those who attack him, is at the root of much of the negative sentiment towards him.

Genuine dislike for Trump, some of that from hurt feelings, seems to be what drives most – or at least much of – the bad feelings toward him. So, if Trump can be fairly accused of obsessive behavior that drives much of the negative sentiment, are his detractors not also behaving obsessively?

Some abandon their professional ethics and standards, saying, in effect, “Trump made me do it.” And that attitude has taken its toll in the field of journalism, which has been severely damaged of late, and elected representatives and senators shirk their responsibility to their constituents in order to focus on obstructing Trump.

Why not balance those negative emotions with earned appreciation for the good things that have happened and are happening during Trump’s tenure as president, the strong economy being a major factor? Are these folks so petty that they cannot admit that he is doing some good things?

For example: since Trump took office unemployment has dropped, currently at 3.8 percent; we have the lowest unemployment rate in history for women, African-Americans and Hispanics; there are more job openings than there are unemployed Americans, seven million job openings and six million unemployed; the number of those counted as outside the labor force tumbled by 487,000 in 2018, asworkers who had become discouraged and dropped out of the labor force are coming back.

He has eliminated many regulations that impeded economic progress; tax cuts have further spurred the economy and resulted in people keeping more of their earnings; wages are going up with Real Weekly Earnings up 2.6 percent; manufacturing added more jobs than government, reversing the Obama trend; some companies that left the U.S. have returned, bringing jobs back; and the GDP growth rate is up.

Why not focus on fixing problems that the nation faces?

The Left largely sympathizes with the undocumented immigrants – that’s “illegal aliens” for the non-politically correct among us – and denies that the tens of thousands sneaking across the southern border and the tens of thousands more who have over-stayed their visas comprise a crisis. Trump, on the other hand, understands that it is a crisis, agreeing with the federal immigration workers and those states that have to try to deal with this senseless situation. 

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, instead of doing its job and helping to revise outdated and flawed immigration laws and procedures to help protect the country and the constituents that elected its members, plans to investigate Trump some more.

The Left’s favorite narrative is that these people are fleeing dangerous conditions, or are just looking for a better life. Of course some, likely most, are. There are proper ways of doing this, and sneaking across the border is not one of them. But others are sex or drug traffickers, robbers, rapists and murderers. 

All of those groups – both those having the best intentions, as well as those with the worst – have one thing in common: they are in the U.S. illegally. Why is any true American willing to allow this to continue?

And while the mainstream media has successfully downplayed this situation, the problem is much worse this year than last. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported on its website, “According to U.S. Border Patrol (CBP), in six and a half months their agents have apprehended more than 418,000 illegal aliens, which surpasses the total for FY2018. In the last six months, CBP has encountered more than 3,000 fraudulent family units. And CBP had apprehended almost 1,000 illegal aliens, mostly family units, before 5 a.m. on April 16.”

“Anti-enforcement politicians and Democrats in Congress reflexively blame the Trump administration or Central American dictators,” the report continued. “Democratic presidential candidate Gov. Jay Inslee (Wash.) even blamed the crisis on climate change.”

While we know that the Russians attempted to affect the 2016 election, as they have in previous elections, there is no evidence that anything they did had a real effect on the outcome. Therefore, Trump was properly elected as president under the electoral system that our Founders designed, and that has worked for well over 200 years.

There is important work to be done that is currently being delayed largely by the obsession to obstruct Trump, and ultimately remove him from office. Those things include: reforming our immigration system, straightening out the shambles that are the healthcare system, paring down the size and cost of government, and continuing to reduce harmful regulations. And these areas affect all Americans, Republicans, Democrats and everybody else.

Finding satisfactory solutions to these problems requires everyone’s good intentions and honest efforts. Now it’s time to get to work.

Congress must fix problems with VA, Social Security

Two groups of Americans that deserve and need the government’s attention are veterans, who have put their lives and their well-being on the line to defend their country, and the retirees who had some of their earnings taken through payroll deductions to provide for their future when they cannot or no longer work to support themselves.

Instead, what exists is a system of health care for veterans that is largely an embarrassing failure, that far too often sees veterans treated like second-class citizens, and a Social Security fund that is running out of money and will be unable to continue paying earned benefits at the current level.

Social Security is a government program whose purpose is to provide monthly income to Americans when they retire, cannot work, or reach a certain age by taxing the earnings of workers that are matched by their employers. Those taxes go into trust funds to provide benefits, and are invested to provide income that builds the trust funds.

The idea was to have a “pay as you go” system funded by workers of all ages and their employers that would produce more income than required to pay the benefits to the relatively few people who were receiving them. Together with the investment income, the system would be able to provide support payments for those collecting their earned rewards well into the future.

We now hear that Social Security taxes no longer produce enough money to cover benefit payments, and for the first time since 1982 the funds will have to be invaded in order to pay recipients their monthly allotment. The ratio of workers to retirees has fallen substantially in recent years, however. In 2000, for each retiree there were four workers. Last year that changed to 2.8 workers per retiree, and it is projected to fall further still, to 2.2 workers per retiree in 2035.

Changing circumstances cause the current level of taxes coming into the system to be insufficient to meet the future demand for payments to retirees. These include lackluster economic growth during the Obama years, inflation that raises the cost of living, as well as an aging population that increases the number of active recipients receiving benefits.

Social Security trustees predict that the fund paying disability benefits will run dry in 2032, and the fund paying retirement benefits will run dry in 2034. At that point, recipients could still receive payments from current tax receipts, but they would receive only 79 percent of the earned benefits they had been receiving.

Relative to the veterans situation, President Donald Trump signed legislation recently that will dramatically expand a program for veterans that lets them seek care from private doctors if they want to bypass the troubled VA system that frequently places them on waiting lists for weeks or months, and is known to sometimes provide less than acceptable care. The Veterans Choice Improvement Act removes barriers that Congress placed on a previous "choice" initiative, eliminating an expiration date that would have shut that program down in August.

Obviously, for those veterans who have substandard experiences from the Veterans Administration’s healthcare program, this will certainly give them an opportunity to get much better care.

This is a wonderful blessing for our deserving veterans, but what about those elderly retirees who had money taken from them and their employers for their future financial security, that now is in jeopardy because of action by the same government who required them to pay into the system?

Allen W. Smith, Ph.D., who spent 30 years as a professor of economics at Eastern Illinois University, quoted some members of Congress in a 2014 column on his Website about government shenanigans that depleted the trust funds. Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coeburn said, on the Senate floor in 2011, “The money’s gone.” And then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, told ABC’s This Week, “It’s not like there’s money in Social Security or Medicare. The government, over the past 30 years, has spent it all.”

So, the money taxed from workers and employers to fund payments to retirees is gone, thanks to our elected representatives in Congress, and the system can only continue paying benefits if payments are substantially reduced, or the government borrows money for that purpose.

That, of course, is not acceptable. Congress must now get off its collective backside and find $2.7 trillion to replace the misappropriated funds and restore Social Security’s financial stability. That will require making some difficult decisions about the funding of government programs.

Government has been off the rails for decades, pouring money into programs that are outside the parameters set forth by the U.S. Constitution.

A familiar Facebook meme says something to the effect of: “How is it that Social Security/Medicare is going broke, but welfare isn’t?”

Even if a welfare system that gives tax money to Americans is constitutional, it’s not okay to give money to those that deliberately aren’t trying to support themselves. Giving money to other countries while our own retired constituents can’t even collect money that they paid into the system is wrong at the highest levels.

This has gone on far too long. Congress needs to fix it.