What would be the theme of your Presidential campaign?

A minimalist, less obtrusive federal government.

Give me liberty or get bent.

If it is broken, I will fix it.
If it could be better, I will make it better.
If it works, I will leave it alone.

Just as a Starting Point, I would:

Repeal the 17th Amendment
• Senators should represent the voice of the State not the voice of the people. The founding fathers designed the federal government so that Senators would be appointed by the State Governor or the State Legislative branch to represent the State.
• When we began appointing Senators by popular election we essentially destroyed the Legislative Branch and formed a Super Congress. Why bother even having two houses in Congress if both represent the voice of the people. Congress is intended to represent the voice of the People and the Senate the voice of the States.

Installation of the 28th Amendment (The R-4 Amendment -Reform, Repair, Regroup and Reset)
• Term limits. Two terms max in Congress. Two consecutive terms max in the Senate.
• No Congressman or Senator with a Felony Offense conviction is eligible to serve.
• Congress and the Senate should be subject to every law they pass (no more special health care or retirement systems). They get the same Obama Care and Social Security as everyone else. Watch how quick it gets fixed.
• All Congressmen and Senators (when in DC) must live in the luxury apartments we provide for them at Taxpayer expense (no more lavish DC homes).
• Congress must go “Virtual”. Keep Congressmen at home in their respective State 90% of the time. They can conduct all of their business by Video Conference, Tele-Conference, and web based applications. Keeping them at home ensures they don’t forget who put them in office, and represent the voice of the people that elected them. It also removes them from easy access to corruption in mass through special interest money.
• Senators will remain in DC 90% of the time and have the same technology installed to link them back to their respective State Governor and Legislative Branch.
• Reaffirm the right of any State to fire or recall its Senator when that Senator stops representing the State government.
• No more automatic pay raise for Congress/Senate. They got cute in the 1990s and passed an Amendment that automatically raises their pay without review or vote. That way they can go home and claim with a straight face that they didn’t vote for a pay raise.
• Tie their pay to the budget.
• No Congressman is eligible for re-election if the Federal Budget is not balanced. Watch how quick they produce a budget and live within its constraints.
• Mandatory IRS audit of every Congressman/Senator/President/Federal Judge every single year. Not quite sure how so many of them are becoming millionaires, but it isn’t based on their salary. Just saying the IRS needs to take a look here.
• Remove appointment power for General Officers from the Senate and President. Only the JCS level Generals will go through this process.
• All other General Officers will go before a Joint Board of Retired General Officers who will review their records and make their recommendations for promotion. And this should be a real Murder Board that rakes them over the coals in front of a tribunal style review. Take the politics out of the promotion process and start looking for performers who speak the truth and toe the line.
• Quadruple the prison sentence of any President/Congressman/Senator (and General) found guilty of any offense. You lead from the front, and that means you set the standard on behavior. Make them MORE accountable than anyone else in the land in terms of morality and accountability.
• Make it illegal for Federal Civilian Employees to belong to any Union.
• Establish meaningful performance appraisals among Federal Civilian Employees and adopt the same “up or out” system that DOD uses. You are either performing well enough to get promoted or you are leaving Federal Service at established time frames (e.g., E-6 at 18 years has to leave DOD if not promoted).
• Incentivize the Federal Work force and offer them bonuses for coming in under budget and for submitting cost savings ideas.
• Eliminate the Electoral College. It was designed in an era when it took six months to get from California to Washington DC. It is no longer necessary or relevant (a political appendix so to say).
• Reform the Immigration Policy and streamline the process. Reward people who come here legally and obey the rules.
• Reform welfare and unemployment to a 24 and out system. You get 24 months of public assistance in your entire life. If you use 2 months while job hunting, you now have 22 months left. It was never supposed to become a way of life for people to live on the public dole for their entire life. 24 months of generosity, and they you either get a job or get hungry. Clock starts for everyone as soon as passed.

Term Limits for Supreme Court/Federal Judges
• I love the notion of an independent court, but when they are sleeping on the bench and pushing 80+ years old, it’s time to rotate them out every so often.

Abolish the Department of Veterans Affairs
• Roll over their function, assets, and budget into DOD. We can take care of our own and do a better job of it.

Abolish the Department of Energy
• Turn over the Nuclear Weapons program and the National Lab complex to DOD.
• Turn over everything else to the commercial sector.

Abolish the Department of Agriculture
• We do not need a Federal Department that employs more people than all of the Farmers and Ranchers they regulate combined. That is insanity.

Abolish the Department of Interior
• Roll the mission of the Department back to the State levels for management of public lands and parks.

Abolish the IRS
• Flat tax. It’s good for everyone and everyone now pays based on their purchases (even the illegals who aren’t in the system).
• No more corporate tax breaks or public funding. Stop propping up weak companies with public money, especially companies that are making billions in profits (yes I am talking oil industry).

Gut the Department of Education
• General goal and standard setting only. All other mission rolls back to the State level

DOD Reform
• Make it a felony offense for any Flag Officer to retire and take a position with any company that does business with DOD. Too many Generals/Admirals retiring with a job offer in their back pocket. It does not appear proper when they show up the next day after retirement representing the same company that they were making purchase decisions about the day before.
• Take this one step further and take a page from an old Roman Law. No General/Admiral will be allowed to set foot inside the DC beltway while on active duty. Only after they retire can they go to DC.
• Sell the Pentagon and reopen it as the world’s largest shopping mall. Move everything done in the Pentagon to Kansas or Wyoming and make them work out of Quonset Huts (they can have heat but no A/C). Make working at the Pentagon painful so that the political types within DOD don’t want to congregate there and accumulate in mass.
• As an aside, make it illegal to open a Starbucks or a Panera within 500 miles of the new Pentagon. In fact, make it an unaccompanied tour and implement General Order Number One that prohibits alcohol consumption while assigned to this post. Let them feel just a tiny bit of the pain associated with being in the field or deployed in country. Might help them focus.
• Eliminate 95% of all DOD civilian employees and contract support. Fill those billets with military personnel. Why are we paying someone to do something we are supposed to know how to do already.
• For the love of God gut the DOD procurement process and start from scratch. This is so broken I could write for weeks on this.
• Rename the DOD back to the War Department.
• Rename DHS as Department of Defense.
• Take the Coast Guard away from DHS and give it to DOD. Too much overlap here and the Navy could easily absorb this mission.
• Many, many, many more reforms here. I would start by Appointing General James Mattis as SECDEF with clear instructions to take no prisoners and to transform DOD (or now the War Department) into a Warrior Culture that is focused on winning wars. If it doesn’t help win a war (e.g., green fuel programs, consideration of global warming in warfighting, etc.) then get rid of it. Make warriors and reward the real warriors by promotion.

Again, just a starting point.