You’d better hope some Republicans in the U.S. House fail in their efforts to take away your rights to make it better.
Several of these birds are trying to whip up support for a change in the United States Constitution to limit the number of times you and I can vote to send someone to represent us.
They say they want to confront the “corruption” of career politicians.
House Joint Resolution 11 would limit House members to six years and Senators to twelve years.
That’s worse than Missouri’s term limits and Missouri’s term limits, take the word of one who has watched the impact from the front row, are a disaster.
Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina finished Congressman Mick Mulvaney’s term with a special election win in 2017. He has since been elected in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
Do you sense a whiff of hypocrisy here?
Do you suppose he will voluntarily step aside after this term?
His bill has 44 cosponsors.
His term limits idea would work the same way our term limit amendment worked when it was adopted 31 years ago. The clock would be reset so a member could only run for three MORE terms after the amendment would go into effect. Past terms would not count.
So let’s assume his idea is passed by the Congress (fat chance, at least in this term) and then is ratified before the 2024 election. He could still run in ’24, ’26 and ’28. So, the sponsor of this three-term limit could serve six terms and part of a seventh.
And if voters in his state react the same way Missourians reacted, he would.
His argument is the same debunked argument we heard in 1992. He told Fox News Digital last week, “It’s inappropriate for our elected leaders to make long-term careers off the backs of the American taxpayers. We’ve seen the corruption it can led to. While there is value in experience, it’s easy to become disconnected from those you serve after too many years in Washington. Most American support term limits, but the problem is convincing politicians they ought to serve for a period of time and then go home and live under the laws they enacted.”
Only one of the 44 co-sponsors is a Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine. He says the House of Representatives was “never intended at its inception to be a place where someone served for 30 years.”
His argument harkens to the Articles of Confederation, which set limits for members of Congress at six years. But when the Constitution was written after delegates learned the Articles just didn’t work, the delegates opted for a system of checks and balances, the bittest check and balance being the voters.
James Madison, considered the Father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 53 that “[A] few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them.”
Madison’s allies felt the better check on corruption was regular elections than short turnovers in office.
They placed their confidence in the citizens, in the voters. Not so for this bunch.
Golden is serving his third term right now. Let’s see if he files for re-election next year.
Among those fervently in support are Matt Gaetz of Florida, a prime example of the kind of person who would bring dignity to the office. He is serving his fourth term. Want to bet he will voluntarily decide he has been around more than long enough next year?
Another bandwagon rider is James Comer of Kentucky, also a four-termer.
Representative Don Bacon, another four-termer, thinks this idea is just ducky, too.
Gaetz thinks term limits would help lead to a “more effective legislature.”
If one calls the process by which Speaker McCarthy was elected earlier this year “effective,” I guess he has a point. Drawing a name out of a hat would have been more effective.
Comer says his constituents are “excited” about the idea. Does that mean they would be “excited” to see him leave after this term? They can prove how excited they are about term limits by kicking him to the galleries in 2024.
Bacon, who doubts this thing will fly in the U.S. Senate, thinks it’s a “good thing.” We’ll see just how “good” he really thinks it is at filing time next year.
The tragic thing about this kind of gut-thinking rhetoric is that those who spout it aren’t honest about the “corruption” they claim they want to fight.
We wonder what a close look at their campaign finance reports will show. Who has their hooks in them? What is their voting record on issue their big-money donors are interested in?
What do the budget hawks among them think should be slashed or eliminated? Things on which average folks rely? Or might it be things the wealthy use to get wealthier—you know, all those things that the big-money folks receive with the questionable contention that the benefits will trickle down to the little people such as you and me or those below us on the economic scale?
Let’s put it this way:
If you are not scared out of your shoes that this entire notion, from its national security and national defense implications and that the national economy would be left in the hands of Matt Gaetz (four terms), Marjorie Taylor-Greene (second term), or Lorena Boebert (second term)—or even relatively responsible people—who would have only four years experience heading into their last terms forever, you should be.
And let’s not even think about talking about George Santos and whether his colleagues from the majority party should have term limited him after three DAYS.
Consider our current House of Representative members:
Cori Bush second term
Ann Wagner tenth term
Blaine Leutkemeyer eighth term
Mark Alford first term
Emanuel Cleaver tenth term
Sam Graves twelfth term
Eric Burlison first term
Jason Smith sixth term
If you favor term limits in Congress and if you voted for five of these people in the last election, you’re an undeniable hypocrite. Bush, Alford, and Burlison are still using training wheels.
But the other five are, in the eyes of Norman and his deluded disciples, corrupt, serving “on the backs of taxpayers,” “disconnected,” and—God help us—career politicians.
Forget that the voters decide every two years if their careers should end. .
The Hell with the voters. They don’t know what they’re doing when they send their representatives and their senators back for another term. The crew behind House Resolution 11 is clearly the moral superiors of the voters and they know that you and I have no business making the decision more than three times on who will represent us although your critical observer has no trouble suggesting there are some people who should be limited to one term—and even that is too long in a few cases.
The responsibility for the good or bad in our government remains with the voters. There are problems with manipulative media and the influence of secret and unlimited money. Perhaps if Norman and his friends focused their considerable intellectual efforts on those issues, they would do more good than they will by limiting the choices you and I can make on election day.
But that’s too hard. Helping to educate a public with an increasingly short attention span when it comes to politics takes far more effort than telling them, “We’ve fixed it so you only have to endure these crooks for six years. And then you can elect another one.” Encouraging citizen irresponsibility is easier. And it sounds better. And it might get them elected to a fourth term. Or more.
Term limits is an unending train wreck.
I’m not buying a ticket on that train and I sure hope you don’t either.
