On November 5, the American people decisively elected Donald Trump as president. They put the Senate in Republican control and left the House of Representatives in Republican hands. The message of the election was an end to “business as usual.”

Did that message reach Congressional Democrats? No. In the past two weeks, soon-to-be-demoted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Judiciary Chairman Richard Durbin have gone into overdrive, pushing through Biden lifetime federal judges for confirmation. Their impetus is trying to shift the federal judiciary in a liberal direction and to beat President Trump’s record of judicial appointments. It sounds like John Adams’ effort to install “midnight judges,” the situation that gave birth to Marbury v. Madison. Funding the government is also a priority, as the current continuing resolution expires December 20. There are indications of efforts to push through a year-long omnibus to cement in place certain priorities like DEI and climate rules that would be unlikely to enjoy support from the incoming Trump Administration. Schumer’s five-to-six-week calendar for the balance of the 118th Congress is quite ambitious for a lame duck Senate. The question is: Why should we even have lame duck Congresses anymore?

A lame duck Congress is composed of members and possibly controlled by a party that has lost its electoral mandate. In the current Congress, more than 10% of the Senate will be gone in January. But they’re still making lifetime decisions in November. They’re trying to lock in spending for the next year. That is not democracy.

I propose eliminating the lame duck session. We should adopt a Constitutional amendment that bans Congress from sitting after a national general election has intervened. Given the possibilities of exigent circumstances, the lame ducks might be authorized to overcome this barrier by a two-thirds vote of both chambers that an identifiable “national emergency” exists, a certification concurred with by the president. Any lame duck session should be limited to the subject of that “national emergency,” and up front we need to say that Congress’s inability to pass budgets in timely fashion does not constitute such an “emergency.”

Modern transportation and communications obviate any need for a lame duck Congress. Under the original Constitution, Congress was supposed to meet on the first Monday of December, a provision shifted to January 3 by the 20th Amendment in 1933. But under the original Constitution, members had to travel by horse-and-buggy to Washington. New members had to close up their local affairs before going to Washington and, as I understand it, in the 19th century there were years when the new Congress convened on the first Monday of December in the year after an election. Sessions were set to meet in winter so that members could tend their farms (and escape Washington’s climate) in summer. None of that is true today. The fact is that Congress generally works from Monday evening to Thursday and that most members go back to their districts/states every weekend. If members can shuttle back and forth multiple times in a week, there is no reason for a lame duck Congress to sit.

I would, therefore, include in my proposed amendment provision that the new Congress convene no less than ten days after a national general election and no later than the first Monday of December. This would effectively repeal the 20th Amendment’s January 3 date for new sessions and push it up, not unlike how that same amendment advanced the presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20.

Setting an earlier date for the new Congress to assemble would also incentivize states to finish the job of counting ballots efficiently. States that prolong receipt/tally of ballots after November’s election day would run the risk, if Congress assembles ten days after an election, of being unrepresented, a powerful motive for wrapping up that job. As long as a quorum of both chambers can assemble, a valid Congress convenes. There is always a quorum of the Senate because of its staggered elections. This year’s elections showed that at least 218 House seats were called within a day of Election Day. Accelerating the sitting of a new Congress may have the salutary effect of discouraging Election Day from morphing into Election Season, at least on its back end.

Politicians would be hard pressed to oppose such a change. The argument from tradition — that we always did things this way — does not hold because (a) the 20th Amendment changed the opening of Congress to January 3 less than 100 years ago and (b) in both instances, the delay was necessitated by then-extant means of transportation. When members of Congress can commute back-and-forth to their districts every week, there’s no reason the new Congress cannot be seated to replace the old.

Obviously, lame ducks do not want to lose power, but one suspects even they would hesitate to admit that out loud. It is bad form to cling to power, prestige, and pay (unlike guns, Bibles, and religion) when the voters kicked you out.

The Washington establishment might complain that seating a new Congress so quickly poses logistics questions: How can we so quickly move defeated and retiring members out and new members in (as well as rearrange prime office real estate according to seniority)? Three responses: (a) when you have to move, you can do it quickly; (b) the in-house lottery for who gets what offices can be done online (vote early, like we’re told to do with elections); and (c) none of those reasons is excuse enough to keep politicians the voters kicked out making decisions on national policy.

Some people might want to bundle this idea into a bigger package of Congressional reform, such as also imposing term limits. That’s not wise. Anything that diminishes politicians’ power is already going to suffer an uphill fight on the Hill. Putting unrelated issues together merely invites everything getting defeated.

So, how do we manage this uphill fight — because politicians don’t surrender power easily — on the Hill? Perhaps by going back to the states. The Constitution allows two-thirds (34) of the states to call for a Constitutional amendment, which then three-quarters (38) can ratify. That approach bypasses Congress. It’s never been used successfully, but it has been “successful” in forcing Congress to address an issue, if only to preserve its power over Constitutional amendments. And a robust debate in the country on this issue would not be a bad thing.

There are howls (though nobody should have been surprised) that the “defenders of democracy and rule of law” pardoned Hunter Biden. That’s nowhere near as big a democratic scandal as defeated politicians of a minority party still making laws. The spectacle now afoot in Washington — defeated Democrats churning out judges in their image and likeness and trying to lock President Trump into their spending priorities — shows what’s wrong with lame duck legislators. The good news is we don’t need to tolerate such abuse of the voters’ will. Today’s transportation makes possible seating a new Congress quickly. The law needs to catch up.

Why keep a defeated Congress around making laws for America when the voters’ will can be efficiently implemented? I, for one, would be willing to start a new Thanksgiving tradition: serving up lame ducks in lieu of turkeys.