As I see it, there are a few major problems with the way the the constitution was drafted and has played out. Some of the ones that I think are obvious are actual representation, taxes/budget, rights/powers, and general law-making.
Starting with what I feel are the most obvious and simple changes, rights and powers, namely that there’s just too much power in the federal government and not enough rights explicitly stated. The fact that so many rights are derived from particular interpretations, perhaps by oversight that they were obvious enough not to be stated, leaves the opportunity that they could be removed or reduced later. That there’s argument over exactly what privacy we do and don’t have, what the second amendment should or shouldn’t cover; hell, there’s confusion over what the establishment cause really does or should mean. I could make a list of what I think they should be, but that’s not really the point, because they should be whatever they should be, as clearly as possible, and if we don’t like it, we amend it. So, for instance, I think the second amendment should just say “the right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed”. While I happen to like that, but I realize some don’t. I’d rather us argue about whether or not it is a good right for us to have and whether it should be expanded or reduced, not arguing about odd wording or nuances in how it could be interpreted.
Similarly, I feel like the federal government gets involved in too many things. For example, federal drug enforcement is a complete joke, particularly with 4(?) states now fully legalizing recreational marijuana, and 20-some having medical marijuana. There’s just WAY too much leeway with the “Necessary and Proper” clause and “Interstate commerce”. That pretty much lets the federal government ignore the 10th amendment.
Next, taxes, I think there needs to be a balanced budget, not just in the sense that we need to have the same coming in as going out, but that each and every bill needs to include reasonable estimates on it’s cost and how those costs will be paid, likely though combinations of fees and taxes. And there needs to be safeguards in place in the event that the estimate is incorrect. Obviously, small adjustments either way are reasonable, but what if it ends up costing 50% more than expected? We can’t just let it stand. A big problem now is that we’re happy to pass bills without considering the cost. What if, every time a bill came up, the people and the congressmen could see how it would actually affect our taxes. So maybe that bill that seems awesome from what it does but costs a ton may not seem so awesome in retrospect.
Further, taxes are WAY too damn complicated. Taxes should have a single purpose, to raise money to pay for the cost of government. Instead, they get used to encourage or discourage certain behavior. We get benefits for owning a house, having kids, doing various other activities. I’m not a fan of social engineering in general, but I realize many people are. Fine, if you want to encourage people to have kids, don’t give a tax break, create a program to give people money or other benefits for having kids, figure out how much it costs, and just tax everyone. That way, at the end point, I see a list of government programs and their cost to me, and I pay it.
This will also drive home how much various programs the government is running ACTUALLY costs ME. We always see costs in terms of billions out of the budget, but I don’t know how much that actually means out of my own pocket. Taxes should basically just be (over-simplified) how much the government needs, minus funds it gets through fees, penalties, or other sources, divided by the average income to give a base tax rate, then adjust that some up or down based on effective cost utility (ie, to make it non-regressive). And that adjustment isn’t too difficult to figure out based on cost of living and salary for a given person. So I could now do all my taxes on one sheet of paper AND see the effective cost of government.
Third, actual representation is just broken. The two party system is so entrenched that it basically means that a lot of people aren’t accurately represented at any given time. If you vote R and the D wins or vice-versa, you’re effectively unrepresented. Worse, if you don’t like either one, you’re basically unrepresented regardless of who wins. Obviously, for a position like the president, where there’s only one, you’re pretty much stuck with the lesser evil, but not with the legislature.
To this end, I’d say get rid of the whole two-house solution. It solves a problem that, while relevant then, doesn’t really mean much anymore, and basically needlessly complicates the problems associated with governing. So we go to a single house, but rather than districting as we do now, we either go to super districts or state-wide and use a system similar to STV (single transferable votes) or instant-runoffs. These sorts of systems let people vote for who they want most, rather than who they see as the lesser of two evils, and while we’d still probably see most of the seats going Democrat or Republican, we’d probably start to see a lot more third party or independent candidates winning seats. Not only does this mean more accurate representation, but it would also help to prevent one party pretty much always having a majority and running with it, so it would force the larger parties to work with smaller ones or independents to get votes. It would also largely reduce or perhaps even eliminate the ability to gerrymander districts.
Given my druthers, I’d probably set it up with super-districts of roughly 5 representatives per district (though we’d increase the total reps some to compensate for smaller states, though even the smaller ones might only end up with 2 or 3 in their super-district). Further, I’d have specific mathematical guidelines for calculating district shape so that it would be as objective as possible, along the lines of the shortest sum of district boundaries (excluding the actual state’s boundaries) that provides the requisite number of constituents in each district to within a some percentage tolerance (maybe 5%). That’s something that could be objectively computed based on census data. If those results aren’t great, I could see making adjustments to prefer natural or pre-existing boundaries (rivers, county/city lines, etc.), or attempting to balancing population distribution (having more toward the center or evenly throughout would probably give better results than having two larger populations on opposite sides), but that’s the basic idea.
I also think this kind of solution largely fixes that no term limit problem because I’d likely have multiple people from the same party to choose from or other alternatives. At the same time, if I really think someone is doing a bang-up job, I should be able to keep voting for them, or if I like the party, just not a particular candidate, I’m not forced to vote for them. As such, I’d probably set the single house to 4 year terms, like the president, and just have those elections in the years not divisible by 4, so we’d still have federal elections every 2 years, just one would be for the executive, then one would be for legislative.
I’d probably push for some kind of instant run-off for president as well to help also encourage people to vote for whom they really want while also preventing spoilers. That is, I often vote third party because, while I realize they won’t win, I hope that if enough people do, the major parties might see who is getting votes and consider some of their stances, but sometimes a candidate I find detestable still has a really solid chance, so I’m still tempted to vote for the lesser evil. If I could do instant run-off, then I could still express my real preference, those numbers could still be seen and understood by anyone who wants to, and then I wouldn’t be afraid of my vote being a “spoiler”.
I’m still undecided about national popular vote for president. While I agree it’s preferable to the electoral college, I couldn’t imagine the chaos that would ensue when (not if) we have a tight election and we now need nation-wide recounts. Imagine the 2000 election fiasco, not just in a few counties but everywhere. Considering it’s only gone against the popular vote twice, I’m unsure if that justifies that eventuality. Maybe a middle-ground could be reached, like using the super districts and distributing votes proportionately? So the representative votes are much closer to the people voting, but still limiting and issues to a more local rather than national issue. I’d be open to ideas on how to address that.
Finally, law-making. I’m of the opinion that EVERY law should have a sunset clause, period. I think we’ve wound up with a lot of laws that cause problems, just not enough to make it worth taking the time to fix or appeal them. If we were forced to rethink them from time to time, rather than just adding more and more band-aids, it might help to simplify things. So on top of requiring a given law to specify it’s cost (as mentioned above) it must have a reasonable sunset clause with some maximum limit (maybe 20 years). This forces us to consider how funding or other problems might have changed and need updating, what other laws in the meantime have made adjustments that can be rolled in, what can be cut, etc. This also prevents us from making long-standing obligations that we just can’t know we’ll be able to keep up without massive changes. Hell, pretty much everything the government does ends up getting reformed in some sense roughly on that sort of scale, so we might as well force it.
And if by some chance a law is pretty darn near perfect and doesn’t need to be changed, there’s no reason it can’t just be reapproved as-is whenever. In fact, if anything really NEEDS to be a “forever” type of law, it should have to go above and beyond and be general enough to not constantly need to be refined. And that’s basically a constitutional amendment.
And on amendments, all of these silly amendments on unrelated bills needs to stop. I think to some extent forcing the funding will help to prevent needless pork from being attached. I’m not really too sure how to stop it, but we could at least limit it by requiring a justification for amendments in how it’s related to the main bill, but I’m sure we could do more. Then again, with a single house and no changes after getting out of comity, it would be less of a problem that way too.