Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., talked to Newsmax on Tuesday about his new resolution that presents a comprehensive roadmap to achieving broad political reform in the judicial and legislative branches.
"I was looking for something that could bring this country together," Khanna told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "What people on the left and right agree on is that Congress and the Beltway are broken.
"It used to be people came here to serve the public and the common good and not just go do the bidding of the highest bidder, and so these are common sense reforms supported by both sides of the aisle."
Khanna is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee for Oversight and Accountability. His Political Reform Resolution focuses on six key items:
- 12-year term limits for members of Congress.
- A ban on members of Congress from holding and trading individual stocks during their time in office.
- A ban on members of Congress and candidates for the House and Senate from accepting contributions from political action committees and lobbyists, and a lifetime ban on lobbying for members of Congress.
- A binding code of ethics for Supreme Court Justices.
- 18-year term limits and regular appointments for future Supreme Court Justices, requiring a new Justice to be added and another to rotate off every two years.
"There is a case of bad apples, but regardless of whether people are abusing the [public's] trust, there's certainly a perception issue," Khanna said. "It's not just that people may be engaged in stock trades. It's also that they go out, they're on the Armed Services Committee, and then they get on the board of Raytheon or Lockheed or become lobbyists for those companies."
Article III of the Constitution grants federal judges lifetime terms unless they retire or are impeached by the House and convicted during a Senate trial. Khanna said he believes his term limits proposal for Supreme Court justices can pass constitutional scrutiny.
"The Constitution says that you have to be a judge for life," Khanna said. "It doesn't say that you have to be on the Supreme Court for life and so you could go to the circuit court or district court. In our founding, people thought that you would be on the Supreme Court as a culmination of your service after you were a distinguished jurist. Maybe, the time you're in your 50s and 60s, and of course, life expectancy was different.
"No one thought we'd be gaming the system, putting people on the court – and both parties do this – in their early 40s and trying to have them there for 40, 50 years. That was never the founding intent, and it has been abused, and I think that's what has led to the extreme politicization of the court."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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