The complete proposed article, published in full so the People can read it, argue with it, and improve it. Nothing here is hidden behind a summary, and nothing in it has been introduced, filed, or endorsed by anyone.
*Proposed Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Message spine, in order: **term
limits — a House of the People — no corporate money** — with three-way government as the mechanism that makes
the House matter. Section order below follows that spine.*
This is a draft, published in full, so the People can read it, argue with it, and improve it. It has not
been introduced, filed, or endorsed by anyone. It is not offered as perfect legal drafting — it is offered as
what it could look like: the shortest honest version of the structure, written in the form an amendment
actually takes, so that nobody has to imagine it or take anyone's word for what it would do.
We publish it knowing it will be challenged. That is the point. A demand nobody can read is a slogan; a demand
anyone can pull apart and improve is a mechanism. Where the draft makes a choice — how many terms, how treaties
are approved, how big the People's House is — the choice is visible on the page, with the reasoning kept
alongside it in the working papers, so an argument about this text is an argument about the thing itself rather
than about a press release.
Two things it deliberately does not do. It does not promise ratification, and it does not name a timeline: an
amendment takes two-thirds of the Congress and thirty-eight states, and this package says so in its own first
paragraphs. And it does not tell you what to think about businesses — it confines the money, which is what the
People asked for, and leaves the argument where it belongs.
We the People of the United States, entitled by our founding to a government free of corruption and tyranny,
and holding that there shall never be a king; seeing that one half of our Congress has become a market in
which the People's voice is priced and sold; and determined that no office in this Republic shall belong to
anyone for life, and that the People shall have a House of their own, and that no part of this government
shall ever again act alone —
Do ordain and propose this Article as an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
hold any elected office of the United States for more than twelve years in the aggregate, whether or not
consecutive.
by the Twenty-second Article of Amendment.
Representatives, the House of the People, the offices of President and Vice President, and every elective
office of the District and Territories of the United States.
The legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist
of three chambers: the House of the People, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.
People of the several States, apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers,
counting the whole number of persons in each State. Each State shall be entitled to at least one Member,
and the House of the People shall never consist of fewer Members than the House of Representatives
consists of on the date this Article is ratified. Its size beyond that floor shall be set by law.
or by proportional or ranked-choice methods, as the several States may prescribe. No electoral system
shall be maintained that denies to any person the equal weight of that person's vote, and no district shall
be drawn for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring any party, person, or interest.
eighteen years, and who has been a resident of the State in which chosen for one year, shall be eligible to
be a Member of the House of the People. No qualification for office based on wealth, property, income,
occupation, education, fame, prior office, party affiliation or endorsement, or access to money shall be
required or permitted; and no fee, filing threshold, or petition requirement shall be imposed that a person
of ordinary means cannot meet.
office, employment, or controlling interest in any entity that retains a lobbyist or holds a contract with
the United States; a Member shall recuse from any matter in which the Member or the Member's immediate
household holds a financial interest; and no person who has served in the House of the People shall, within
five years after leaving that office, accept employment from or compensation paid by any entity that retains
or has retained a lobbyist at any time during that person's service or within the five years before or
after it.
No candidate for, or Member of, the House of the People shall solicit, accept, or be aided by any
contribution, donation, loan, expenditure, independent expenditure, gift, or thing of value from any
corporation, partnership, business trust, labor organization, trade association, or any other entity that is
not a natural person. Campaigns for the House of the People shall be financed solely by funds provided
equally to every qualified candidate from the public treasury, and by contributions from natural persons
alone, subject to limits the Congress shall set. Every expenditure made in support of, or in opposition to,
any such candidate shall be publicly disclosed within forty-eight hours.
The House of Representatives shall continue as constituted under Article I, Section 2, and its Members shall
continue to be chosen in the manner therein provided, for the terms therein prescribed. In the exercise of
its powers the House of Representatives shall be understood to represent the corporate, commercial,
institutional, and other organized interests of the United States, and the Senate shall continue to represent
the several States. Nothing in this Section shall alter the composition of the House of Representatives, the
qualifications of its Members, the manner of their election, or the right of any person to vote for them.
unless passed in identical form by each of the three chambers. Disagreement among the chambers shall be
resolved in conference among all three, and the concurrence of all three shall be required for presentment
to the President under Article I, Section 7. The Congress shall speak to the President with one voice.
Senate, two-thirds of the Senators present concurring, and with the concurrence of a majority of the
Members present of each of the other two chambers.
chambers shall appoint, Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and
all other Officers of the United States; the concurrence of a majority of the Members present of each
chamber shall be required.
the Senate the sole power to try all impeachments. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of
two-thirds of the Members present of the Senate and two-thirds of the Members present of the House of the
People.
conducting oversight, or performing the functions of its own committees.
States.
the purposes of this Article.
remainder of this Article and its application to other persons and circumstances shall not be affected.
affect the powers reserved to the several States by the Tenth Article of Amendment.
This Article supersedes Article I, Sections 1, 2, and 7, Article II, Section 2, and any other provision of
this Constitution inconsistent with it.
months after ratification, and shall convene on the third day of January next following, whereupon
Sections 2 through 6 shall take full effect.
provided in Article I.
the United States. No more careers built on a public seat.
driver, a nurse, a retiree. No wealth test, no fame test, no party test.
law. Every candidate funded equally from the public treasury, every dollar published within two days.
nobody loses their vote. What changes is that it is named honestly: the chamber of business and money.
alone. One voice to the President.
JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States imposing limits of tenure upon
elected office in the United States, creating a House of the People into which no corporate contribution
or business expenditure may enter, and requiring the concurrence of all three chambers of the Congress in
the enactment of law.
*Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled
(two-thirds of each House concurring therein),* That the following article is proposed as an amendment to
the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the
Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years
from the date of its submission by the Congress:
(Here follows the text of the Article.)
This amendment is the origin of the change, not the whole of it. The campaign that carries it — the petition,
the mail, the email, the money that pays people who are skilled at this work — is how the People execute the
redress. The amendment is what they are executing it toward. See the v2 reframe brief for the funding rail
that must exist before any donation is promised.
The first days decide whether this is seen at all. If you have already signed, the single most useful thing you can do is pass it to someone who hasn't.
Sign the petition — change.org/peoplesproject