CUYAHOGA FALLS, Jan. 30, 2025 — Not everyone I’ve voted for to become our president was elected to the office, but all those who did – going back to Jimmy Carter – made decisions as president with which I disagreed.
Years before I cast my first ballot for president in 1976, my civics teachers at James F. Rhodes High School in Cleveland taught me valuable lessons. They pointed out how compromise was central to secure unanimous approval of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and again critical to gain the approval and signature of 39 of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention of the U.S.
Like many others, my high school teachers also introduced me to the Federalist Papers, a series of essays written to advocate for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
Perhaps the most highly regarded Federalist Paper had an original title of “The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection.” Later it was given a number, Federalist No. 10. Its author, James Madison, predicted that eventually political leaders would form factions and enter alliances with other people having similar interests: political parties. Madison rejected the principles of factionalism and direct democracy, contending that a representative democracy – at the local, state, and federal levels – would be an effective protection against factions and partisanship.
For more than 200 years, Madison’s thinking proved correct. But as we approach the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation, it’s become apparent none of our Founding Fathers could have anticipated a growing hyper-partisan nature of our two-party system, and its long-term ill effects on us citizens.
Sadly, we seem to have morphed into governance where there is little or no bipartisanship. Many in our society disagree with the other side simply because they are the other side. This leads to a phenomenon that I call emotional pounding, where “Ds” attack “Rs” and Rs attack Ds only because they are on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Many now disagree with EVERY decision which a person of an opposite political persuasion makes.
This emotional pounding plays out on a personal level in social media. Those who voted for and back our 47th president, Donald Trump, are hyper quick to support every move he makes with their social media posts. Those who opposed Trump are just as fast at criticisms, devising and/or copying and pasting memes and photos critical of Trump. The “let’s give those We the People elected a chance to govern” philosophy, which many in our nation once held, has disappeared.
Two stark realities of the status quo though are wreaking terrible harm on our nation, worse still than just an emotional pounding. One of these realities comes through “lifetime” seats in Congress. Nancy Pelosi won a special election for her Congressional seat in San Francisco in 1987. She’s now in her 20th term of office. Mitch McConnell was first elected to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky in 1984. He’s been re-elected six times to a six-year term of office, meaning he’s now in his 41st year of holding this office.
The longer people such as McConnell, Pelosi and others stay in Washington, the more beholden they are to special interests and well-heeled political action committees who fuel Congressional election campaigns. The more entrenched elected officials become, the more likely they are to engage in hyper-partisan politics against those of the opposite political party. We’re seeing that unfold right now in consideration of President Trump’s nominees for cabinet offices.
We the People are very displeased about this. A Pew Research survey shows that 87% of adults favor limiting the number of terms that members of Congress are allowed to serve. Of that, 56% strongly favor term limits. [i]
But there is an even bigger stark reality facing We the People in 2025. Runaway spending continues unabated. President Dwight Eisenhower asked Congress to raise the federal debt ceiling – the amount of debt the federal government could have – back in 1960. The debt ceiling has been raised a total of 78 times since then, by Republican and Democratic presidents, by Democratic-controlled and Republican-controlled Congresses.
At the instant of this writing, the national debt is $36,220,552,448,363. Or on shorthand, just over $36.2 trillion dollars. Or more than $106,000 for every man, woman and child living in the U.S. What’s alarming about this is the recent growth in deficit spending. In March 2006 – less than 20 years ago – Congress passed and President Bush (43) signed a bill raising the debt limit to $9 trillion.
The federal debt has basically quadrupled in less than 20 years. Since Covid-19, our total national debt annual has been nearly 100% of GDP. The only other time in U.S. history this happened was in the final years of World War II.
Obviously spending has been exceeding revenue for the federal government for decades. In the most recent fiscal year, which ended on September 30, 2024, federal spending was $6.752 trillion. Revenue was $4.919 trillion. The result was an additional $1.833 trillion added to the federal deficit. (Chart below is from statistics from the Congressional Budget Office.) INTEREST on the federal debt last year was $882 billion, making it the third biggest line item in federal spending. Only national defense and Medicare received more funding.
Present and future harms of such an immense debt are too great to calculate. We’re creating a terrible burden for future generations to pay. We’re diverting resources from other priorities because we have to pay on the debt. (Anyone else remember our FEMA administrator saying last fall the agency was out of money when Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck?) It reduces the ability to advance economic opportunities.
There is a way – only one way – to address the problems of term limits and uncontrolled spending. It is to amend that founding document, the U.S. Constitution, to put term limits and fiscal controls into place.
Article V of our Constitution spells out two ways to amend our Constitution. One is through Congress. OK: What are the odds of Congress adopting an amendment to limit its own power?
The other is through the 50 States. Article V also gives Ohio and all of the U.S. states the power to amend the Constitution through meeting and proposing amendments.
In 2025, the only organization openly committed to doing this is based out of Texas, an organization named the Convention of States. I’ve become convinced that this is the only way to save us from ourselves, and to untangle the two Gordian knots — term limits and deficit spending – which can doom our future.
Give a look/see at the Convention of States and its plans and activities. See below. If you agree, hope you too learn more about these two threats, unlimited terms and a balanced budget. If you agree, sign the petition and help change the status quo for a better future.
Here’s a link: https://conventionofstates.com/polling
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I teach in the areas of Media & Journalism Studies and Communication Studies. Last fall I did many interviews on radio stations about the election campaign, and on the state of the media in the U.S. I would rather not revisit details again, save to present two charts which illustrate reality.
The first chart, from PBS/NPR and Marist, is significant because it demonstrates what We the People thought of the performance of President Biden. No additional commentary is necessary.
The second chart is more significant, sadly so. It shows that most of us are now relying primary on mobile devices for news, and fewer and fewer of us are paying for subscriptions to print media for news. I talk about this in presentations to community groups. It’s Exhibit One of the “dumbing down” of American intellect.
I depart from this topic with a simple plea – subscribe to a newspaper! We the People have an obligation in a democracy to become more and better informed, but it seems as if we’re doing just the opposite.
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After the last story I wrote in late October, the one predicting that Trump would win the popular vote and receive up to 320 votes in the Electoral College (he gained 316), I took an emotional pounding. I needed a break from eyeoncleveland.com stories and posts. But we will be back with a lot of interesting stories in 2025. One of the first will be a multi-part story about Help Is Here (HIH) a vital mental health awareness and suicide prevention program developed at Cuyahoga Community College (my employer). The first part of the story will be appearing soon. There’s great advice for us all with HIH.
More will follow. Eyeoncleveland.com also plans to cover the Chorale of Cuyahoga Community College which is planning a trip to Ireland to sing in the Dublin Chorale Festiva in June. Of course, we’ll focus time and attention on my (Kerezy’s) favorite high school program, the Hiland Hawks men’s baseball team.
I’m teaching a sports reporting class at Tri-C the semester, and some of my students’ best writing could appear on eyeoncleveland.com this year as well. In fact, I originally began this website to highlight the work of Cuyahoga Community College students.
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As I completed this story, word came out of Washington DC about the tragic crash of American Eagle Flight 5342 and an Army UH 60 (Blackhawk) helicopter last night. When I heard, I immediately prayed to God for the families of the passengers and crew, and for my former student and friend Eva Pate and her husband/partner Logan Bye.
Fortunately they are safe, but 67 others died in the collision and crash. Please keep these families in your prayers.
Finally, God continues to bless me. I’m nearly four years removed from my treatments and surgery for bladder cancer, and there’s been no reappearance. I’m grateful for that, and I continue to pray for and provide help as I can to others battling cancer, especially those with the Cancer Support Group at Riverwood Community Chapel.
There’s more still. But it’ll wait.
A FEW SOURCES CITED
[i] Pew Research Center, “How Americans View Proposals to Change the Political System, “ September 23, 2023. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/how-americans-view-proposals-to-change-the-political-system/
[ii] From: https://www.facebook.com/RepBryanSteil/photos/in-2024-federal-government-spending-was-6752-trillion-while-revenue-was-4919-tri/1015160143769258/?_rdr
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