Top Priorities for the New Congress and the Senate

Top Priorities for the New Congress and the Senate

By T.S.Khanna, January 9, 2007.

Waldo Emerson once remarked that nothing is more powerful than the idea whose time has come. Many great ideas appear whose time comes and stays but they are not even noticed, leave aside testing their power. This is because democracy dilutes the power to a degree that no one in power fully feels the responsibility or faces accountability.

The top priorities of the new Congress and the Senate should be

1. To go through the recently published book, “The Broken Branch”, and make immediate repairs,

2. Take an immediate and substantive, lasting action to resolve the deficit problem,

3. Resolve the foreign policy problems in the Middle East from rational and national point of view, not from the partisan viewpoint of controlling power,

4. Have a rational, non-partisan, thorough evaluation of the Constitution made by an appointed Commission (of nine knowledgeable non-partisan political science professors, journalists and Supreme Court judges) to identify its weaknesses in meeting the present day challenges. Then amend the Constitution as may be necessary,

5. Time and again, Congress and Senate have shown that each is not capable of self-monitoring its ethics, efficiency, and quality of performance. Ask for a monitoring Commission, to be appointed by the Supreme Court Chief Justice, to route out the “corruption culture” of Washington, D.C., and gain back the public trust and respect.