Candidates should be REQUIRED to take an exam - the questions all pertaining to our CONSTITUTION (perhaps assembled by The Heritage Foundation) After completion, their scores should be magnified as they run for office. ALL congress critters both upper and lower houses should be required to take this same exam. It’s time they knew the LAWS OF THE LAND. These are the Laws and this is the Land.
Ill go a step further and suggest a constitutional amendment that enumerates not only your suggestion about candidates for government office, but lets broaden who has to take the test.
All legal voters who want to continue to vote, and immigrants seeking citizenship, would be constitutionally required to pass a basic constitutional law test.
Such a test would stress not only the Founding States division of federal and state powers evidenced by the 10th Amendment, but also stress the federal governments constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers, including the Supreme Courts clarification of Congresss limited power to appropriate taxes.
In fact, the following excerpt should not only be amended to the Constitution as part of the voter qualification amendment, but also printed at the top of the IRS 1040 until patriots can work with state and federal lawmakers to abolish the 16th Amendment and the unconstitutional (imo) IRS. (The 17th Amendment can disappear too.)
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States."Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
And lets hold voters responsible for also knowing the following excerpt before they can continue to vote.
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]. United States v. Butler, 1936.
The test would make it easier for patriots to work with attorneys to prosecute federal and state officials in all government branches who blatantly ignore the feds constitutionally limited powers and constitutionally enumerated rights.