if you could change one thing about the constitution, what would it be?

Nosotros last amended the Constitution a generation agone.

And so much has changed since then.

The viral-like spread of the Internet was two years away. Pagers were all the same gaining in popularity. Arugula was rare in grocery shop aisles.

The economy was starting to recover from a recession, gliding its way into a tech blast. Nosotros had a mix of confidence and good for you skepticism in our government, after having crushed Saddam Hussein'southward Iraq in state of war. At the southern tip of Manhattan, the World Merchandise Center towers stood every bit two exclamation points on a magnificent skyline.

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The 27th Amendment passed back in 1992 at present seems like a historical footnote, rather than a prophetic statement of values. Information technology stopped Congress from hiking its salaries mid-session, a symbolic act that did niggling to improve the public'southward stance of Capitol Hill.

For the July fourth holiday, The Fiscal Times reached out to leading experts, lawmakers and academics with a uncomplicated question: How would you amend the Constitution?

Their answers, edited for space, are beneath:

IMMIGRANTS CAN BE PRESIDENT
It bothers me that our Constitution excludes from the presidency all Americans who lack a U.S. citizen parent, the so-called "natural born citizen" clause.

I'd similar to change Department 1, Commodity 2 to but read, "No person except a denizen of the United States shall be eligible for the role of President." Call up of all the remarkable Americans who have held high public part but have been constitutionally barred from seeking the presidency, such as Madeleine Albright (born in Czechoslovakia), Elaine Chao (Taiwan), Jennifer Granholm (Canada), and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austria).
– Stephen H. Hess , presidential scholar and senior boyfriend emeritus, Brookings Institution

REMIND D.C.: STATES ARE IN CHARGE
If I were able to ameliorate the Constitution by a wave of a wand, I'd attempt to find some way to brand the tenth Amendment more constructive.

The rights of states have gradually been then eroded that information technology's creating a congestion of taxes and regulations and paper work. I would like to have a tenth Subpoena on steroids – which would somehow cause our land and our jurisprudence to call back our federal structure, and realize that the central government is express and that powers are reserved to the states.

For instance, the Marketplace Fairness Act that we only passed in the Senate was all about whether Washington volition permit states to set their ain tax policy. That shouldn't even exist an result in my stance under the 10th Amendment.
– Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN)

GUARANTEE A FEDERAL RIGHT TO VOTE (WE DON'T HAVE One)
Americans often talk about their "correct" to vote. The reality – noted in cases like Bush v. Gore – is that no affirmative federal right to vote exists. Instead, courts often defer to land-based voting laws and administration. Although Americans vote for one president, one U.S. representative, and normally ane U.S. senator, every 1 of the greater than 3,000 counties in the Usa tin can administer federal elections in a unique (and ofttimes inefficient) manner.

 While it wouldn't be an instant catholicon, a constitutional amendment conferring a right to vote and empowering Congress to enforce that right would provide voters with heightened legal protections and set the phase for standards that enhance the voting experience for all Americans, regardless of where they live.
– Joshua Field , deputy director, Legal Progress at the Heart for American Progress

Rest THE BUDGET
I would similar to see an subpoena requiring a balanced "principal" upkeep, which means that the cost of servicing the national debt would exist excluded.

It should contain a provision that Congress must reduce spending proportionately across areas of the federal budget and that revenue enhancement increases must maintain the nowadays progressivity of the tax code, phased in inside ten years of the amendment'due south passage.

Without a constitutional mandate, politicians and other citizens merely volition not have the volition to make the changes necessary to address our looming financial crisis.
– Steve Bong , senior director at the Bipartisan Policy Center

NO LIFETIME JOBS FOR SUPREME Courtroom JUSTICES
If I could amend the Constitution, I would add together a provision ending lifetime tenure for federal courts, especially the Supreme Court. I would replace information technology with a long, nonrenewable term of no more than 20 years. Furthermore, I believe the Chief Justice should non hold this position for life, just for a four-yr term that would be renewable.

This reform would reduce the intensity of fence on court nominations because the stakes wouldn't be so high; information technology would reduce pressure level to appoint young judges who will spend the maximum corporeality of time on the court; information technology would reduce pressure on federal judges to avoid retirement lest a fellow member of the reverse party engage their replacement; and information technology would bring fresh blood and thinking into the judicial system.

A June vii, 2022 CBS News/New York Times poll plant lx percent of people agreeing that lifetime appointments gives judges too much ability versus 33 pct who said it is a practiced thing because it makes judges independent.
– Bruce Bartlett , former deputy assistant Treasury secretarial assistant for economic policy; columnist for The Fiscal Times

DON'T CHANGE A Matter
Several major bourgeois thinkers suggested that the Constitution does not need to be changed, but rather to accept its principle of limited government guide both Congress and the president.

Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute noted that the Fourth Amendment protects confronting warrantless searches, "yet the National Security Bureau tracks everybody with Congress' tacit if not explicit consent."

Instead of an subpoena, Tom Miller of the American Enterprise Plant said the Constitution needs "a better glossary to define and restrain the many open up-ended words and phrases in the Constitution's bodily text that provide wide latitude for judicial reinterpretation and expansion far across their original significant."

Here is the rationale from Matt Kibbe , president and CEO of FreedomWorks:
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights don't demand any additions or changes – they simply need to be practical consistently throughout regime in order to really work. The responsibility lies with "We the People" to hold our elected officials answerable to defending those rights at every plow.

A truly constitutionally-express government would not be almost $17 trillion in debt considering at that place would be no unconstitutional bailouts, health care takeovers or subcontract subsidies. Free energy plants would not exist closing their doors, because pollution would be managed through private holding rights and not capricious regulations.

The IRS would not have the discretionary power required to discriminate confronting Americans based on their political behavior, and innocent civilians would exist protected from unreasonable searches and seizures past Homeland Security and the NSA.

The Federal Reserve would non devalue the dollar, because the Fed wouldn't exist – at that place would be no regime-induced boom and bust. The president would not issue so many executive orders, considering only Congress would have the power to legislate.

NO PRESIDENTIAL TERM LIMITS
The essence of the American Constitution was the creation of a certificate of non governance. Information technology says what government cannot practice – not what it can do. The government cannot regulate speech communication, association, faith, printing, and gun buying.\

The 22nd Amendment does regulate what the people can do, namely elect a president as often equally they similar. It was passed by Republicans as soon as they could, not wanting to put upwardly with another FDR. Of course, information technology backfired as sick-considered things often do, as they could not elect Ike or Reagan to a tertiary term.

Equally long as representatives can be elected and re-elected with impunity, then and so, also, should presidents.
– Craig Shirley , historian and Ronald Reagan biographer

WORST-Example-SCENARIO CONGRESS
I hate amending the Constitution as a general matter.

But we accept no plan in place to get the House of Representatives and Senate up and running quickly if there is a terrorist attack that kills or disables enough people that you fall beneath a quorum. The simply effective style to deal with this is to have a ramble subpoena that would enable emergency interim appointments.
– Norman Ornstein , resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

MAKE PUBLIC SERVICE MANDATORY
I'd propose a Universal National Service subpoena – a ramble requirement that all able-bodied Americans ages 18 to 26 devote at to the lowest degree two years to the service of their nation. They could select a service activity from among a broad diversity of U.S. military branches, civilian government (national, country, and local), and qualifying non-turn a profit options. The details are in my book, A More Perfect Constitution.

In essence, it would be a Bill of Responsibilities to back-trail the Bill of Rights. Everyone should contribute something of themselves, not but taxes, to the nation that has long been a beacon of promise and the envy of the world.
– Larry Sabato , University of Virginia political scientist

PUBLIC FINANCING FOR CAMPAIGNS
To get elected and to stay elected, politicians now accept to spend much of their fourth dimension raising coin and, thereby, becoming beholden to donors. The electric current system is, by its very nature, corrupt and those who campaign are almost inescapably corrupted.

The amendment should qualify Congress to regulate and finance master and general elections for the presidency, the House, and the Senate. It should crave that all individual contributors be listed by proper name within a matter of days. The wording should allow direct funding for campaigns, public funds to match private contributions, caps on full campaign spending, confined on entrada spending by exterior groups.
– Henry Aaron , senior swain at the Brookings Institution

Brianna Ehley, David Francis, Maureen Mackey and Eric Pianin of The Fiscal Times contributed reporting.

Source: https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/07/03/9-Changes-to-the-Constitution-How-Would-You-Change-It

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