Debunking 'Congressional Reform Act of 2011'

Like just about everyone else in America with email, I regularly receive political messages that are, to a lesser or greater extent, hoaxes. Sometimes I respond to these messages personally by debunking the hoax for the person who sent it to me and possibly the other recipients; sometimes I respond publicly, generally with an essay on the Religion, Politics, and Sex website; and, often, I just let it go because I have got too many other more pressing things on my plate.

What usually surprises me is how quickly and easily I am able to get to the bottom of the lies behind such messages, often with the help of websites like Snopes.com. In such cases, I am generally left mystified by the number of people who simply forwarded them with apparently no attempt to verify the truth of what they were sending out to their friends and relatives and calling for action on. I am, of course, giving my correspondents the benefit of the doubt by assuming that again and again they allow themselves to be tools for whatever individuals or entities are deliberately attempting to spread false information; some of them, presumably, are not just unwitting dupes but, for reasons of their own, are knowingly party to trying to deceive the people they are emailing.

Recently, I received a many-times-forwarded message of this sort titled “Congressional Reform Act of 2011” that at first appeared to be a typical piece of Tea Party/neocon invective with one notable exception: It had originated with the Democratic Party of Comal County, Texas! (See A (Belated) Response to a (Strange) Hoax on this site.)

Following is the text of this odd message. As is usually the case, it is either obviously or verifiably false in almost every way and very poorly written, begging the question of why anyone would forward it to other people. My comments/debunks follow various points in brackets. Snopes.com does a pretty good job of addressing most of this at the post titled 28th Amendment.

Winds of Change ... Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around. [Warren Buffet is not retarded and therefore knows that most of what appears in this message is pure falsehood. Some comments he made in a recent interview were used as the basis for claiming he ultimately authored this message, but in fact he has never made such a call to action.]

1. No Tenure/No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office. [The falsehoods implied by this item, as well as #2 and #3, are easily clarified by anyone at About.com U.S. Government Info.]

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. [See About.com U.S. Government Info.]

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. [See About.com U.S. Government Info.]

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. [Yes, by God! Why should members of Congress be allowed to break the very laws they presume to impose on the rest of us. … Indeed. This really is a foolish item, in that elected officials are already accountable for following the laws of the land. If they violate them, they either get punished or they get away with it, but there are no legal provisions giving them a pass.]

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. [As far as I can tell, this item does not mean anything, and more than anything seems intended to mock the intelligence of anyone who would forward a message containing it.]

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. [Really? Not sure if this is true or not; messages like this that spread generally do so at the same rate as any other contagion, so maybe it is actually accurate.]