You can spur reform by informing the federal officials who want your vote that you want to know whether they will promise to work to pass the Honest Deal Act by taking the Honest Deal Pledge. You can do so easily. Your clicking here will open up a website that let you send a letter by email to your representative and senators. It takes only a few minutes and you don’t have to sign up or log in. The default message is as follows, but I urge you, if you can spare the time, to amend it, even if just a little. It should say what you believe and show the recipients that the point of view is your own.
Dear Politician:
A half-century ago, elected officials of both parties in Congress and the White House adopted a new system for enacting laws and spending programs—one that lets them take the credit for promising good news while avoiding the blame for the government producing bad results. Because the people we elect avoid accounting to us for what the government actually does to us, we have a federal government that ill serves us. All this is documented in DC Confidential: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington, by David Schoenbrod. The book also shows how Congress can stop the trickery by passing the Honest Deal Act. A summary of the act and a chapter explaining its design is available at www.dc-confidential.org/honestdeal.
I request that you consider publicly committing yourself to working to enact and faithfully implement the Honest Deal Act by taking the Honest Deal Pledge, which is available at the same link. Please let me know your decision and also e-mail your signed pledge to pledges@ dc-confidential.org.
Sincerely,
(your name)
Alternatively, you could send a letter to your legislators by snail mail. If you wish to use the Web site’s letter as a starting point, you can copy it. Here is a link that will provide you with their postal addresses.
You can also (1) phone these officials’ offices in Washington or locally and say that you want them to consider publicly taking the Honest Deal Pledge or (2) visit any events these officials may be attending in your area, where you can introduce yourself, hand them a copy of the Honest Deal Pledge, and ask them to consider signing it.