Basically, a carte blanche scenario. Supposing you could enact just about any policy that you want (within reason, of course) - what would you push through Congress and the president’s desk?
Taxes, gun control, abortion, affirmative action, defense, foreign policy, energy, etc.
A nationwide ban on partisan gerrymandering and the establishment of a nonpartisan redistricting commission.
Codify Roe v. Wade.
Remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and allow states to regulate it on the same level as alcohol.
Prohibit employers from firing employees for off-the-job drug use.
Establish a guest worker program for migrants that allows them to reside legally in the country, pay taxes, and earn a path to citizenship if they remain gainfully employed and law-abiding, and protects them from abusive employment practices.
Single-payer healthcare.
Incorporate sexuality and gender identity into the Civil Rights Act.
Reaffirm the Voting Rights Act and end state practices that make it more difficult to vote, and automatically register all citizens to vote when they turn 18.
Darn good start there @Smapti.
I’ll be brief. Stop doing what you’re doing, look at what the rest of the civilized world is doing, and do that instead. The issues are endless, but start with health care, gun control, and the elevation of news media to their proper status as enablers of democracy and not self-serving profit centers. That latter point is why American politics currently resembles an insane asylum.
I’d start with a Democracy Protection Act, that made all sorts of vote-suppression schemes (including those enacted by legislatures) a criminal offense, with real penalties (including for legislators who enact such measures).
Seems like that’d run afoul of the speech and debate clause. The OP says we have a friendly Supreme Court, but I don’t think they’re giving us carte blanche to rewrite the Constitution.
Imma vote “Smapti For President” already!
How would you achieve … whatever it is you want to enact?
The devil is in the details.
For example, I abso-fucking-lutely agree that U.S. “health care” needs, uh, health care.
But what changes would you make, and how would you enforce them?
I’d also like to establish a universal basic income and a New Deal-esque construction program to resolve the housing crisis and end homelessness, but I’m less sure of how to fund those.
Even though they’re friendly in the hypothetical now, let’s reform them while we’re at it - keeping within the Constitution but increasing circuits therefore judges, and ensure balance with a decent appointment scheme like 1 per term with a variable number of slots. (I don’t think we can fix Senate confirmation holdups without an amendment, though I could be wrong on that.)
To add to list: Make DC and Puerto Rico states (though that’s just a band-aid for voter imbalances that would need Constitutional changes to fix).
If we’re allowed to make an amendment, mine would be that the Senate has a fixed amount of time after the president submits an appointment (let’s say 60 days) to act on it, and if they neither approve nor reject the appointee then they are confirmed as if they had voted to approve. I’d similarly put a deadline for one house to act on a bill after it has been passed by the other house, so that one party can’t unilaterally block popular legislation without going on the record by voting against it.
Statehood for DC; a judicial ethics code with penalties including for the Supreme Court; and protection of abortion rights; to start.
Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. Guam and the Virgin Islands too if they have a referendum that supports it.
Expand the Supreme Court to 13, every presidential term gets 4 SCOTUS nominations per term (one per year), and the longest serving Justice steps down once per year. The first four new ones would be nominated without needing anyone to step down, then after that one is replaced every year.
Codify Roe v Wade, gay marriage, and LGBTQ rights protections.
Raise minimum wage, slowly, to $15.
Medicare for all.
Eliminate SS payroll tax cap.
Top tax bracket to 50%.
Graduated inheritance tax, based on total wealth rather than just dollars, so that half of billionaires’ wealth is taxed when they die. Graduated such that there’s no impact on middle class, minimal impact on upper middle class, small impact on multi millionaires, and only a significant impact on billionaires.
Huge boost to IRS enforcement. At the same time, automatic taxes calculated by the IRS. They send you the form already filled out and you pay or modify/challenge if you think it’s incorrect.
National bank run out of post offices. Every community now has a bank that serves working people, not for profit but for providing basic bank services. Checking and savings accounts are free to set up.
Most of that stuff above, plus eliminate the electoral college. One citizen, one vote.
What happens when one (or more) of the Justices vacates the bench early ie retires for whatever reason, is impeached or dies?
OK, but what defines “vote suppression?” Something like unfairly erasing voters’ names from the rolls would be clear-cut, but if a state requires voters to produce a photo ID (as even some blue states do,) is that vote suppression?
Universal Health Care. Run by the army medical corps. The government lends you money to pay for medical or nursing school. Until your loan is paid off, you stay in uniform and go where the government deems that you are needed. Instead of malpractice lawsuits, government doctors are subject to UCMJ penalties. A monumentally incompetent doctor would be busted back to buck private, and spend the rest of his career cleaning bedpans in Point Barrow.
Tax the heck out of plastic surgeons, and use the proceeds to subsidize pediatricians.
Medical records will be kept by the FBI. (Why not? Your privacy is as safe with one set of bureaucrats, as with any other.)
Before voting on a bill, the entire text of the bill must be read aloud on the floor of the legislative chamber. Any legislator not present for the entire reading is not allowed to vote. This way, we don’t have those last-minute, thousand-page, pork-laden budget monstrosities.
With UHC, we will need a national ID card anyway. Might as well have it include citizenship/immigration status, driver licensing info, and voter registration info as well.
Carve up the District of Columbia. Cede the residential districts back to Virginia and Maryland.
Referendums in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam: statehood, or complete independence. Status quo is not an option.
All government employees will wear uniforms. Social workers will wear black uniforms with jackboots. (Just a friendly reminder: the entity that writes your welfare check, can also tap your telephone.)
Simplified tax code. If your income is A, then your tax is B. Period. No deductions, no exemptions, no loopholes.
Any automaker, bank, or any other company that ever takes federal bailout money, will be split up into 50 smaller companies, each headquartered in a different state. The higher your position in the company before the split, the deeper into flyover country you have to move after the split.
The government shall not meddle in the arts. No censorship, no subsidies. Government interaction with artists shall consist of commissioning decorations for public buildings. Such decorations shall be bland, uncontroversial, and loathed by the critics. If you want to make something controversial, do it on your own dime. The taxpayers are not obligated to feed mouths that bite them.
The government will hand Bill Gates a check for several billion dollars. Windows XP will become public domain. Google will be split up into at least a dozen smaller companies, each headquartered in a different state.
A cautionary note on this idea, which I think done properly has considerable merit.
The Japan Post Bank is an example of the concept.
At various times Japan Post Bank has been the largest financial institution in the world.
My concern within the US is what an institution of this heft invests it’s deposits and the capability to simply appoint somebody like Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General. The track record of US S&Ls whenever deregulation allows them to effectively operate as personal casinos.
I’d start by taking out the profits made by the insurance companies, as well as the vast majority of their expenses not related to paying benefits. We don’t need people making profit from healthcare. Pay the people who provide the actual care. Pay them well, even better than what they currently make. But get rid of all the administrative bloat and the shareholder profit.
To clarify my above response, I’d also support universal healthcare in a Medicare for all type of way. All the money that people currently pay to commercial insurance for their premiums would go to Medicare. I’d be fine with a loan repayment program like the one you describe. One year of school = one year of service. But pediatrician subsidies (which they do need) don’t need to come from taxes on plastic surgeons. They should come from the money going to stockholders of Aetna, Humana, etc., as well as from the salaries being paid to the majority of their employees (a few would be hired on by the government to administer the expanded Medicare program).
That seems like a good way to ensure either that nothing gets done in Congress, or that the courts essentially take over the legislative process by having to interpret all the vagaries that short, non-detailed bills would produce.
The Constitution is only a few pages long and we’ve spent 230 years trying to figure out the precise difference between the meanings of the words “may” and “shall” because of it.