Supreme Council for the USA By T.S.Khanna,Jan.5,2013

Supreme Council for the USA.

T.S. Khanna, January 5, 2013.

The US Congress seems to be under a perpetual snow storm.  It keeps spinning its wheels without moving.  It was designed to be the fountainhead of the U.S. government but it has turned into a stagnant pool of highly paid “do-littles”.

Well intended checks and balances have turned into unintended deadlocks and gridlocks by the growing ideological polarization of the political parties.  Representative democracy has created tribal politics splitting the nation by intense partisanship.  There is no accountability for collective irresponsibility or for delivering timely and quality product.  There is no organization with an overview of and responsibility for protecting and promoting the national interest.

 At the inception of U.S. government, the Senate was created at the insistence of smaller states supporting slavery.  They wanted equal voting power in the Congress as a safeguard against abolition of slavery.  The senators were elected by the state legislatures as their reps at the federal level.  To eliminate corruption by the State legislators, this procedure was changed to election by popular vote by the Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution.  Another function of the Senate was to provide a cooling off period for the House of Reps (lower House) decisions.

The Senate has long outlived its intended purpose and functions.  Now it is only a duplication of representation.  The heated up Senate is unable to cool off the lower House. 

The present process of appointing the Supreme Court judges is highly partisan influencing their attitude.

The two-year term for the lower House members is cumbersome and expensive. They are constantly concerned about the next election.  They are beholden to the lobbyists.

Democratic principles require that power be divided with checks-balances.  Yet, over the years, the US President has emerged as the most powerful single person in the free world.  Many of his powers are not constitutional, they are conventional.  At every presidential election, the cleavage between the parties and the citizens becomes deeper and more intense.

In view of the above, I call upon “Political Pandits” (scholars) to consider the following suggestions:

• Establish a 15-member non-partisan Supreme Council.  The non-partisan members may be elected from fifteen zones created by intelligent grouping of the states, promoting national integration. The Supreme Council may be designed to counter the divisive politics of representative democracy.
• Abolish the Senate, transferring all its responsibilities and functions to the proposed Supreme Council.
• Make the lower House a unicameral congress with only one six-year term for its members; one third members to retire every two years, like in the present Senate.
• The Supreme Council to have the powers to over-rule the dead-locks (beyond the prescribed dead-lines) of the congress for taking timely decisions in the national interest.
• The present offices of the president and the vice president may be absorbed by the President and the Vice-President elected by the Supreme Council every two years, doing away with the expensive and divisive presidential election by the general public.  All the present presidential powers to be exercised with the approval of the Supreme Council.