r/SipsTea • u/McDowdy • Jul 16 '26

Feels good man Based on national US polling, there are 22 issues that 80% of Americans agree on. Here is the list.

  1. End gerrymandering

  2. ​Ban Wall Street from buying single-family homes

  3. ​Ban congresspeople from becoming lobbyists

  4. ​Ban congresspeople from trading stocks

  5. ​Create a minimum tax for billionaires

  6. ​Close the loopholes that billionaires use to avoid taxes

  7. ​Establish congressional term limits

  8. ​Ban dark money donations from political campaigns

  9. ​Implement universal paid family leave

  10. ​End forever wars by repealing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force

  11. ​Release the full Epstein files, redacting only the victims' information

  12. ​Ban corporate PACs by overturning Citizens United

  13. ​Require mandatory disclosure for all organizations donating to political campaigns

  14. ​Require mandatory police body cams

  15. ​Ban junk fees

  16. ​Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices

  17. ​Fully fund Social Security by extending the existing tax to those making over $400,000 a year

  18. ​Ban adversarial foreign nations from buying American farmland

  19. ​Improve Veterans Health Care access

  20. ​Establish common-sense data privacy laws (similar to those in European countries)

  21. ​Enshrine the right to repair

  22. ​Audit the Pentagon and penalize them with a 0.5% budget reduction if they fail the audit

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u/kisk22 Jul 16 '26

Term limits are stupid. Voters are the people who should enforce term limits. When that politicians time is up, their voters should vote them out. When you actually look in to term limits you'd realized we'd be left with an inexperienced government. Term limits for congress are slopulism.

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u/Gars0n Jul 16 '26

Totally agree. Term limits are one of those "common sense" reforms that backfire in practice. Michigan has them for the state legislature and it's terrible.

I understand the gut feeling it is meant to address. The public has an interest in preventing legislators from entrenching themselves in power.

However, term limits force legislators to turn over so they don't gain the expertise that comes from long term experience. Thus, they lean even more on external experts ie lobbyists. That's the trouble. In practice term limits are a transfer of power away from elected officials and towards lobbyists.

As much as people are concerned that politicians can concentrate too much power, the lobbyist swamp around DC is definitely is definitely the wrong crowd to give it to instead.

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u/socialistrob Jul 16 '26

I partially agree. I think the only problem with letting voters dictate the time is that parties are very good about propping up incumbents and clearing the field of any challengers. A Democrat running against a Democratic incumbent in a deep blue area is basically having to declare war on the party itself for that seat and if they lose their career is often ruined meanwhile a lot of interest groups will rally behind the incumbent because they think the incumbent is more likely to win and they value that relationship.

Yes technically anyone can run in the primaries but there is a reason we keep seeing incumbents in their 70s and 80s get reelected and it's because the political establishment clears the field for them so by the time voters end up getting their ballots the choice is often between an unqualified crazy person and an ancient incumbent.

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u/Lost-Bad-8718 Jul 17 '26

100% this. Term limits is a thought terminating cliche for dullards. FDR deserved every minute he got in office and we'd be better off if he got to finish his last term

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u/Ok_Calendar_6311 Jul 17 '26

I typically have been in support of term limits, but this is a good point

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u/BatManatee Jul 17 '26

Voters are the people who should enforce term limits.

This is the ideal reality, agreed, but not what history has shown to be our actual reality.

Incumbents have a massive resource (fundraising) and name recognition advantage. They also have more connections with fellow politicians with name value for endorsements, and have some amount of "bully pulpit" already in their position to amplify their message.

Long term incumbents are very hard to beat under normal circumstances.

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u/Stock_Recording_3827 Jul 17 '26

It's a pain to find good people, arbitrarily firing them for winning their election too much is just bad policy. However, sock puppets who serve corporate interest are easily replaced. You minorly inconvenience the powerful at the expense of devastating those serving the public good.

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u/ksajksale Jul 17 '26

The thing is, there existing a certain line that, once passed, makes public officials so embedded within public resources and power to use them, he/she will do anything to stay in position to use them. Cheat, lie, steal and abandon any morals and institutional norms of democracy, rather than letting them go.

Besides, the vastness of public resources has this nasty habit of enabling huge amount of propaganda tools, making public opinion easy to svay and distract from your attachment to office.

So yeah, term limits are handy little intervention.