The PledgeCongress has no boss.
We're the performance review.
real count, no rounding up
Congress works for the American people, and the American people are the only employer in the country with no way to review the body they pay for.
Parties grade their own. Leadership sets the agenda. Donors set the incentives. The result is a Congress that acts only when catastrophe removes every alternative. Progress is tied to emergency.
There is a short list of things Americans already agree on. They don't pass. Not because they can't, but because in Washington cooperation is unsellable and gridlock is profitable. The Pledge ends the gridlock where America already agrees.
We are not a party. We don't care who you vote for. We care that Congress delivers, every term, on the things all of us already agree on.
What we ask of anyone who wants the job
Taken publicly, in writing, on the record, by any candidate for federal office, of any party.
I pledge to the people of my district, my state, and my country that, without regard to my party, its leadership, or my personal position on any Plank:
- 1. Floor. I will support bringing every current Plank to a recorded floor vote, including signing any discharge petition or supporting any procedural motion required to force that vote.
- 2. Passage. I will vote to pass every current Plank when it reaches the floor as a clean, single-subject measure matching its published compliance test, and I will vote against any amendment designed to gut, delay, or poison it. A Plank buried inside unrelated legislation is not a Plank vote. I am never obligated to accept unrelated measures as the price of a Plank, and I will support every procedural path to a clean vote.
- 3. Enforcement. I will use the oversight powers of my office (hearings, subpoenas, appropriations, and investigations) to ensure every enacted Plank is faithfully executed. A signed bill that goes unenforced does not count as done.
- 4. Confirmations. Where my office holds confirmation power, I will not vote to confirm a nominee to any office responsible for carrying out an enacted Plank unless that nominee commits, under oath, to faithfully execute it.
- 5. Accountability. I accept public grading of my compliance, based solely on my recorded votes and documented official actions. If I break this Pledge, I may not take it again.
What we ask of you
We are not pledging to vote for anyone. We are pledging to stop rewarding candidates who refuse accountability. The People are in control.
I pledge that in every federal election, primary and general:
- 1. Candidates who want my vote answer to me, not their party. I ask every one of them: did you take the Pledge? Those who keep it come first. I keep my judgment, always. Refuse accountability, and party loyalty will not buy back my benefit of the doubt.
- 2. Where no candidate has taken the Pledge, refusal gets nothing from me. I will use the designated write-in, cross party lines, or leave the race blank. My vote is never a consolation prize.
- 3. I will vote in primaries, especially to defend Pledged incumbents punished by their own party for keeping their word.
Clause 3 is not decoration. The first legislators to honor commitments like these were destroyed in primaries, not generals. The Pledge protects its keepers or it protects no one.
Take the Voter Pledge
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