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JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to establish term limits for members of Congress, reform congressional compensation and financial conflicts of interest, decentralize the legislative branch, protect the purchasing power of American workers, and require that Congress operate under the same laws it imposes on the American people.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein),

ARTICLE

Section 1. Term Limits

No person shall serve as a member of Congress — in the House of Representatives or the Senate, in any combination — for more than twelve years in total. Service in either chamber prior to the ratification of this Article shall count toward the total limit. Upon reaching the total limit, a member shall be ineligible for election or appointment to either chamber for a period of twelve years following the conclusion of their final term.

Congressional intent: The career politician is not a feature of republican government — it is a defect of it. The Framers imagined citizen legislators who would serve, return to private life, and be governed by the laws they passed. Twelve years provides enough time to develop expertise and accomplish substantive work; enough time, also, to be corrupted by the institutional incentives that come with long tenure. The exclusionary period prevents the de facto perpetuation of career service through interrupted terms.

Section 2. Congressional Compensation Reform

(a) Effective upon ratification of this Article, the annual salary of members of Congress shall be set by statute at no less than the median annual compensation of chief executive officers of companies included in the Standard and Poor’s 500 index, as calculated and published annually by the Social Security Administration or its successor agency. No member of Congress shall receive any reduction in salary during their term of service.

(b) No member of Congress, nor their spouse, nor their dependent children, shall receive any income, compensation, gift, or thing of value from any source other than the United States government during the member’s term of service, except income from investments held in a qualified blind trust as defined in subsection (d). Speaking fees, consulting fees, advisory arrangements, board compensation, royalties on works created during the member’s service, and all other forms of outside compensation are prohibited.

(c) No member of Congress, nor their spouse, nor their dependent children, shall purchase, sell, or otherwise trade any individual security, commodity, cryptocurrency, or other financial instrument that is subject to influence by federal legislation or regulation during the member’s term of service. All such assets held at the time of the member’s swearing-in shall be divested or transferred to a qualified blind trust within ninety days.

(d) A qualified blind trust for purposes of this Section is a trust managed by an independent trustee, the contents and transactions of which are not disclosed to the member, their spouse, or their dependent children during the member’s term of service, and the existence and aggregate value of which is publicly disclosed.

(e) All financial disclosures required by this Section shall be filed electronically, made publicly available within five business days of filing, and maintained in a permanent searchable public database by the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate.

Congressional intent: The current $174,000 congressional salary has been frozen since 2009. It is, for more than half the members of Congress, an irrelevance — a formality paid to people whose actual financial lives are conducted in an entirely different register. As of the most recent available data, the median net worth of a member of Congress exceeds $1 million; the wealthiest sitting members hold assets in the hundreds of millions. When the official salary is economically insignificant to its recipient, the salary does not shape behavior. What shapes behavior is everything the salary does not cover: the speaking fees paid by industries seeking favorable regulation, the stock trades timed to legislative calendars, the consulting arrangements that are lobbying without the registration requirement, and the implicit promise of future employment on the other side of the revolving door.

The purpose of Section 2 is not to reward members of Congress with higher pay. It is to make the official salary the only salary — sufficiently competitive to attract qualified public servants who are not already wealthy, and sufficiently exclusive to remove the supplemental economy of influence that currently governs most members’ financial decisions. A Congress whose members can genuinely live well on their government salary, and who are legally barred from every alternative form of income, is a Congress with no structural incentive to serve anyone other than the voters.

Section 3. Decentralization of the Legislative Branch

(a) Members of Congress shall not be required to maintain their primary place of work in the District of Columbia. Each member shall maintain an official district office in the congressional district or state they represent, which shall serve as their primary legislative workspace.

(b) Congress shall make available secure remote voting and deliberation technology enabling members to vote, attend committee sessions, participate in floor debate, and conduct all official legislative business from their district offices except as provided in subsection (c).

(c) Members shall be required to be physically present in the District of Columbia for: the opening and closing of each legislative session; the State of the Union address; joint sessions of Congress; conference committee proceedings requiring in-person negotiation; and any other proceeding designated by a two-thirds vote of the relevant chamber as requiring physical presence.

(d) The official residence and office allowances currently provided to members of Congress in Washington, D.C. shall be reallocated to fund the establishment and maintenance of official district offices meeting the technology and security standards established under subsection (b).

Congressional intent: The $3 billion annual lobbying industry is a geographic phenomenon. It exists in Washington because that is where all 535 voting members are concentrated, and proximity to those members is the commodity that lobbyists sell to their clients. The K Street corridor did not develop because Washington is a pleasant place to work. It developed because access to power is most efficiently purchased when power is concentrated in a single location. Dispersing members to their home districts does not eliminate lobbying — determined interests will follow — but it raises the cost and reduces the efficiency of institutional influence-buying in ways that benefit ordinary constituents, who already live in the districts where their representatives would now be working.

Section 4. Lobbying Restriction

(a) No former member of Congress shall, for a period of five years following the conclusion of their service, engage in lobbying activity as defined in the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, or any successor statute, with respect to the federal government.

(b) No former senior congressional staff member — defined as any individual who served in a compensated staff position at or above the GS-15 pay grade equivalent, or in a position designated as senior staff by the relevant chamber’s ethics office — shall engage in such lobbying activity for a period of five years following the conclusion of their service.

(c) The restrictions in this Section shall apply to direct lobbying, indirect lobbying through intermediaries, the provision of strategic advice to lobbying clients regarding matters within the former member’s or staff member’s prior jurisdiction, and any other activity the functional purpose of which is to use prior congressional relationships to influence federal legislative or regulatory outcomes.

(d) Violation of this Section shall be a federal felony punishable by imprisonment of not more than five years and a fine of not more than $500,000, in addition to disgorgement of all compensation received in connection with the violation.

Congressional intent: The revolving door between congressional service and the lobbying industry is not a secondary feature of Washington corruption — it is its primary mechanism. The implicit promise of future lobbying income, at salaries ten to twenty times what government pays, is the consideration that makes regulatory capture economically rational for the officials being captured. The existing one-year cooling-off period for members and two-year period for senior staff are not serious prohibitions. They are waiting periods after which the same relationships, the same access, and the same institutional knowledge are available for sale to the same industries. A five-year prohibition is a genuine disruption. The felony provision is necessary because no financial restriction deters behavior if the expected profit from violation exceeds the expected cost of penalty.

Section 5. Single-Subject Legislation

(a) Every bill or joint resolution enacted by Congress shall be limited to a single subject, which shall be clearly and accurately expressed in the title of the bill or resolution.

(b) No bill or joint resolution shall contain any provision that is not germane to the single subject expressed in its title, as determined by the presiding officer of the relevant chamber in consultation with the chamber’s parliamentarian. Any provision ruled non-germane shall be stricken from the bill or resolution prior to passage.

(c) Any citizen of the United States may bring an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia challenging an enacted law on the grounds that it violates this Section. The court shall have jurisdiction to sever and void any provision found to violate this Section, while leaving the remainder of the law in effect, provided the remainder is capable of standing independently.

Congressional intent: The omnibus bill is the primary vehicle through which Congress passes legislation that could not survive independent scrutiny. The process works as follows: a provision that would fail on its own merits — a corporate tax exemption, a regulatory carve-out, an appropriation for a project that has never been publicly debated — is attached to a must-pass bill at the final stage of negotiation. Members who oppose the attachment must choose between defeating the provision and defeating the entire bill, which may contain years of legitimate work and urgent appropriations. They almost always accept the attachment. This is not legislating. It is hostage-taking. The single-subject requirement eliminates the leverage entirely by eliminating the vehicle.

Section 6. Equal Application of Law

(a) No provision of federal law shall exempt members of Congress, congressional staff, or congressional offices from any requirement, prohibition, or obligation applicable to private citizens or private employers of comparable size and function.

(b) Any such exemption existing at the time of ratification of this Article is hereby void and of no effect.

(c) Members of Congress and congressional offices shall be subject to the jurisdiction of all federal civil rights, labor, employment, workplace safety, and anti-discrimination statutes, and to the same enforcement mechanisms available to private employees, without modification or limitation except as expressly required by the Speech or Debate Clause of Article I.

Congressional intent: Congress has historically exempted itself from significant portions of the legal framework it imposes on everyone else — including provisions of civil rights law, labor law, occupational safety requirements, and whistleblower protections. The Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 brought Congress partially within the coverage of eleven workplace laws, but the application remained incomplete and the enforcement mechanisms weaker than those available to private employees. Section 7 closes every remaining gap. The principle is elementary: a legislature that governs others by rules it exempts itself from is not a legislature. It is an aristocracy.

Section 7. Fiscal Responsibility

(a) Total outlays of the federal government for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, except in the following circumstances: (1) a formal declaration of war by Congress pursuant to Article I; (2) a declaration of national emergency by a three-fifths vote of both chambers of Congress; or (3) a period during which the unemployment rate, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, exceeds 7 percent for three consecutive months.

(b) In any year in which a deficit is authorized under subsection (a), Congress shall adopt, simultaneously with the authorizing legislation, a plan for returning to balance within ten fiscal years.

(c) The debt ceiling shall be automatically adjusted to accommodate deficits authorized under subsection (a) and shall not require separate legislative action.

Congressional intent: The national debt has exceeded $39 trillion. The annual interest payment on that debt now exceeds $1 trillion — more than the entire defense budget, and more than the federal government spends on education, transportation, and housing combined. The people paying that interest are the holders of Treasury bonds, disproportionately the wealthiest Americans and foreign sovereign wealth funds. The people paying the taxes that fund that interest are working Americans. The deficit is not an abstract accounting problem. It is a recurring transfer of purchasing power from workers to creditors, run by a Congress that has found it politically easier to borrow than to tax or cut.

The exceptions in subsection (a) are genuine and appropriately broad. Wars must be financed. Economic crises require countercyclical spending. The 7-percent unemployment trigger provides flexibility during downturn without requiring a formal emergency declaration. But the default rule — that the government must live within its means — is a constraint on the extraction mechanism, not an ideological commitment to austerity.

Section 8. Enforcement and Effective Date

(a) Sections 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8 of this Article shall take effect on the first day of the Congress seated following ratification, except that Section 2(a) regarding compensation shall take effect upon ratification.

(b) Sections 4 and 5 of this Article shall take effect ninety days following ratification.

(c) Congress shall have the power to enforce the provisions of this Article by appropriate legislation, provided that no such legislation shall narrow the rights or restrictions established herein.

(d) Any provision of this Article held unconstitutional by a court of competent jurisdiction shall be severable, and the remainder of the Article shall continue in full force and effect.

A Note on Ratification

The 29th Amendment follows the 28th. It is not a parallel track or an alternative. It is the second act of a two-act strategy.

The 28th Amendment — the US Majority Amendment — strips corporations of constitutional rights and declares that money is not speech. It removes the external corruption infrastructure: the Super PACs, the dark money networks, the corporate “speech” that drowns out the voices of working people. Without it, the 29th Amendment would be overwhelmed before it could take effect — the same corporate money that currently captures Congress would capture the ratification process.

But with the 28th Amendment ratified, the political environment changes fundamentally. The Congress seated to implement that victory — the Worker Congress elected by the People Primaries 2028 strategy — is the Congress that proposes the 29th. They have already demonstrated they cannot be bought. They have already signed the promise. The 29th Amendment is what they do once they have cleared the field.

Together, the two amendments constitute a complete reform. The 28th removes the money. The 29th rebuilds the institution. One without the other leaves the job half done. A Congress freed from external corporate spending but still populated by members whose personal financial interests are entangled with the industries they regulate is a Congress waiting to be recaptured. A Congress of honest members operating inside a structure that rewards corruption will eventually be corrupted.

The goal is both: clean money and clean structure. The US Majority Amendment and the Congressional Reform and Accountability Amendment. The 28th and the 29th.

Together, they restore the republic.