Step by Step: How to unfu*k Congress
Shame Before Reform: A Concrete Plan to De-Corrupt Congress and Rebuild a Government for the People
America does not suffer from a lack of patriotism—it suffers from a lack of shame in the halls of power. The corruption is not subtle. Members trade stocks in companies they regulate. Super-donors buy access with checks bigger than most mortgages. District lines are carved like crime scenes. And when trust collapses, Congress shrugs and fundraises off the outrage. Enough. Here’s a detailed, do-it-now → near-term → long-term plan with enforceable rules, real penalties, and zero loopholes.
I. Immediate Actions (this session, no excuses)
1) Total Ban on Individual Stock Trading by Members, Spouses, and Dependent Children
Rule: Members may hold only (a) U.S. Treasury securities and (b) broad-based, low-fee diversified funds (e.g., total-market or S&P 500 index).
Mechanics & Enforcement
30-day divestiture window after taking office into a qualified blind trust run by a court-approved fiduciary.
Criminal penalties for violations (felony insider trading standard) and automatic disgorgement of profits + treble damages.
SEC + DOJ joint jurisdiction; House/Senate Ethics must refer within 14 days of credible complaint.
Real-time disclosure: public dashboard showing each Member’s compliance status; missed filings trigger automatic fines.
Model bill clause: “No Member of Congress, spouse, or dependent shall directly or beneficially own or transact in any individual equity, option, crypto token, or sector-specific fund.”
2) NASCAR-Level Sponsor Transparency—On Their Person and Everywhere They Work
You shouldn’t need a PhD to know who owns your representative. Sports figured this out decades ago.
Rule of the House/Senate (adopted by majority):
Top 10 funding sources (PACs, bundled donors, dark-money pass-throughs traceable to a source, and top industry categories) must be visibly displayed whenever Members appear in official capacities: on a nameplate patch in chamber/committee, and prominently on official websites, newsletters, and hearing placards.
Quarterly updates with machine-readable datasets; $5,000/day fines for noncompliance; loss of committee voting after 30 days delinquent.
To address compelled-speech objections, tie it to access to official platforms (floor speaking time, committee questioning, official mail privilege). You want the microphone? Wear the disclosures.
3) No Fundraising During the Workday, No Phone-Banking From Federal Buildings
Rule: Ban solicitation or fundraising activity 9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET on session days, and anywhere on federal property, ever.
Penalty: First offense: $50,000 fine; second: loss of leadership posts; third: referral to DOJ for knowing misuse of public resources.
II. Near-Term Structural Fixes (pass within 12–18 months)
4) Ban Corporate Lobbying as We Know It—and Shut the Revolving Door
A. Corporate Lobbying Moratorium (statute):
Five-year ban on direct federal lobbying by for-profit corporations and their controlled entities.
Allowed: testimony in public hearings, written comments on rules, and participation in multi-stakeholder advisory processes on the record.
Not allowed: paid, private lobbying communications or indirect lobbying via trade associations (close the shell-game by statute).
Enforcement: DOJ Public Integrity + mandatory lobbyist registry audits; violation = corporate felony, triple damages on contracts/benefits gained.
B. Revolving-Door Locks (statute):
10-year cooling-off period for Members and their Chiefs of Staff from any paid lobbying/“strategic advisory” work aimed at Congress or agencies.
Lifetime ban on lobbying for any entity that benefited from a program the Member directly authored or that appeared in the Member’s committee jurisdiction in the prior 4 years.
5) Peg Congressional Pay to Public Service Benchmarks (Not Donor Gratitude)
You want legitimacy? Tie pay to performance the public can see.
“Public Service Pay Scale” (statute + constitutional safe-harbor):
Base salary = current level.
Annual adjustment = weighted index of:
Bipartisan productivity: number of enacted bills with >60% bipartisan cosponsors (40%).
On-time budgets/appropriations (30%).
Ethics compliance score (10%)—zero missed disclosures, zero stock-trading violations.
Constituent service metrics (20%): casework resolution rates and response times, audited by GAO.
To avoid poll-manipulation, do not use opinion polls. Use hard metrics the body controls. If Congress misses deadlines and ethics, salary falls automatically; if it governs competently, it rises modestly.
No retroactive raises; changes take effect next Congress (respecting the 27th Amendment).
6) Sunlight Everywhere—“Three Open Books” Rule
Open Calendars: all Member/committee meetings posted within 72 hours with attendees, topics, and materials (security-sensitive redactions allowed with IG sign-off).
Open Contracts: any federal contract >$100k posted with plain-English summary, scoring sheets, and bidder list.
Open Drafts: legislative text and amendment redlines posted 72 hours before any vote.
III. Long-Term, Lock-It-In Solutions (constitutional amendments & national standards)
7) Democracy Integrity Amendment (Two Pillars: Term Limits + Anti-Gerrymandering)
Section 1 — Term Limits
House: six terms (12 years) lifetime.
Senate: two terms (12 years) lifetime.
Partial terms >2 years count as full. Applies prospectively (no ex post punishment).
Section 2 — Fair Maps, Not Safe Seats
Nonpartisan independent commissions shall draw all congressional districts.
Required criteria: equal population, contiguity, compactness, respect for political boundaries, preservation of communities of interest, and partisan fairness (measured via accepted metrics such as efficiency gap / mean-median).
Explicit ban on intentional partisan advantage.
Fast-track judicial review with special masters authorized to impose maps if commissions or legislatures fail.
No federal court abstention (overrides Rucho by constitutional text).
Amendment text (draft):
“Congressional representation shall be determined by districts drawn by independent citizen commissions. No district plan shall be adopted that materially advantages or disadvantages a political party, as determined by neutral statistical tests established by law. This provision shall be enforceable in federal and state courts.”
8) Overturn Rule-Buying: Campaign Finance Clean Slate
Public matching or vouchers for small-dollar donations; strict caps on all private contributions.
Constitutional clarification that Congress and the States may limit money in politics and require source transparency for any election spending—closing the door that Citizens United blew open.
IV. Teeth: An Independent “Article I Integrity Office” With Prosecution Power
All the rules above are worthless without a cop who bites.
Create an independent Article I Integrity Office (AIIO):
Grand-jury authority and independent counsel to prosecute Members, staff, and outside actors for bribery, illegal gifts, undisclosed conflicts, stock-trading violations, and lobbying bans.
Budget autonomy (fixed % of federal receipts; Congress can’t starve it).
Whistleblower bounties (10–30% of penalties recovered) and ironclad anti-retaliation protections.
Mandatory public reports each quarter listing allegations received, cases opened, referrals made, and outcomes.
V. How This Actually Changes Behavior (and Why Half-Measures Fail)
No personal equities = no personal windfalls from committee decisions. The fastest corruption vector disappears.
Visible donors = visible pressure. When constituents see “TOP DONORS: Defense Contractors / PBMs / Crypto PAC,” sanctimony gets harder, and conflicts get called out in real time.
Lobbying moratorium + revolving-door locks = less legal bribery. Influence peddling turns from a golden parachute into a legal hazard.
Performance-indexed pay = incentives to govern, not to grandstand. You want your raise? Pass budgets on time, pass bipartisan laws, keep your ethics clean, serve your constituents.
Term limits + fair maps = competition and renewal. No more safe seats for life. Fresh blood, less calcified leadership cliques, and fewer incentive structures to trade favors over decades.
Independent prosecutor = fear of consequences. Corruption with real prison time changes minds faster than op-eds.
VI. For the Record: What Gets “Gutted, Reversed, Overturned” If We Don’t Lock It In
Every reform era in American history—Trust-Busting (early 1900s), post-Depression bank rules (1930s), Watergate ethics laws (1970s), post-2008 financial reforms—was followed by relentless industry pressure and court decisions that nibbled, then devoured, the safeguards. Without constitutional foundations and self-executing triggers (automatic fines, automatic pay reductions, automatic prosecution referrals), the next wave of lobbyists and donors will whittle this down to a press release.
So we hard-code the guardrails. We weaponize transparency. We criminalize the grift. We stop pretending that “disclosure” alone is enough and ban the behavior that breeds corruption in the first place.
VII. Closing: “We the People” Is Not a Slogan—It’s a Standard
A Congress that can day-trade defense stocks, hide who bought their last fundraiser, carve their own voters, and float seamlessly into seven-figure lobbying gigs does not represent We the People. It represents the house account.
Shame has to come first. Then law. Then enforcement that actually hurts.
Ban the trades. Wear the donors. Shut the revolving door. Pay for performance. Lock in term limits. Outlaw partisan gerrymandering. And give the public an independent prosecutor who doesn’t ask permission to knock.
That’s how you end the racket—so the republic can finally get back to work.
Article I established Congress…not the Presidency, not the Supreme Court. So f’ing act like it.