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Summary of our proposed amendment
 One of the most
important reasons for adopting term limits is to reduce corruption in
Congress. Term limits will attract a different sort of politician:
one who is more interested in promoting the welfare of his or her
country rather than in pursuing a lifelong career. Our proposed
amendment limits members of the House to three two-year terms, and
members of the Senate to two six-year terms. No one would be allowed
to serve in Congress, either as a Senator or a Representative for
more than a total of 16 years. The amendment would take effect
immediately, so that anyone in Congress who had served longer than
the limited time would be kicked out of office at the next election.
Members of
Congress would start their time in Congress knowing that their time
is limited. There will be less incentive to pander to lobbyists and
special interests in exchange for campaign contributions, because
members of Congress will only be able to run two or three times, and
will thus have less need to build up large campaign war chests.
Lobbyists create their influence by building up long-term
relationships with politicians. Term limits will create higher
turnover in Congress, and will thus decrease the influence of
lobbyists by making it harder to build those long-term relationships.
Additionally, term limits will change the way people think about
Congress. Turnover in Congress will become the norm, and voters will
thus be less attached to the incumbents, since they change more
often. This will make it easier to vote corrupt incumbent politicians
out of office.
History
When the Articles of Confederation
were adopted, Thomas Jefferson, urged that they include term limits
“to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by
continuing too long in office the members of the Continental
Congress....” Jefferson's recommendation was followed, and the
Articles of Confederation contained term limits for delegates to the
Continental Congress. Unfortunately, the Constitution did not adopt
such term limits. When the states ratified the Constitution, several
leading statesmen regarded the lack of mandatory term limits as a
dangerous defect. Richard Henry Lee viewed the absence of legal
limits to tenure, together with certain other features of the
Constitution, as “most highly and dangerously oligarchic.” Both
Jefferson and George Mason advised limits on reelection to the
Senate, because, said Mason, “nothing is so essential to the
preservation of a Republican government as a periodic rotation.”
The historian Mercy Otis Warren, warned that “there is no provision
for a rotation, nor anything to prevent the perpetuity of office in
the same hands for life; which by a little well timed bribery, will
probably be done....”
Concerns that members of Congress would
remain in office in perpetuity did not materialize until the 20th
century. When the Constitution was written, it was expected that
turnover in Congress would average fifty percent, because that was
what happened in the state legislatures at the time. During the 18th
and 19th centuries, this held true, with turnover rates in Congress
averaging about fifty percent. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the
tendency to look with mistrust on political power was so ingrained
into American culture that even the officeholders themselves
perceived their occupations in a disparaging light. James Fennimore
Cooper, the novelist, described the common view that “contact with
the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences
to which men are exposed.”
During the 20th century, as more and
more power concentrated in Washington, such ideas became less common,
and Senators and Representatives began serving longer and longer
terms. By 1968, the turnover in Congress had fallen to single digits,
and has stayed in that range ever since. Some Senators in the 20th
century clung to office for nearly half a century, such as Strom
Thurmond (over 46 years) and Ted Stevens (over 40 years).
Reformers during the early 1990s used
the initiative and referendum process that exists in some states to
put congressional term limits on the ballot in 23 states. Voters in
every one of these states approved the congressional term limits by
an average electoral margin of two to one. In May 1995, the United
States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v.
Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995) that states cannot impose term
limits on their federal Representatives or Senators. Attempts were
made in the mid-1990s in the House of Representatives to adopt a term
limits amendment, but all such attempts failed.
Congress's failure to adopt a term
limits amendment is a perfect illustration of why the Article V
constitutional convention process was put in the Constitution by the
Founders: to give the people a way to get around a corrupt Congress
that refuses to act. In this case, members of Congress did not want
to lose the privileges and status of their position, and voted to
preserve their own self-interest, even though they were voting
against the interests and desires of their constituents. An Article V
convention is the only way to circumvent Congress and adopt the term
limits that most Americans want. Text of our proposed amendment A term limits amendment is supported 71 percent of Americans. Our proposed amendment text for a Term Limits Amendment is:
Section 1.
No person shall be elected to the House of Representatives more than
3 times, and no person may serve as a member of the House of
Representatives for more than seven years.
Section 2.
No person shall be elected to the Senate more than 2 times, and no
person may serve as a member of the Senate for more than 14 years.
Section 3.
No person may serve longer than a period of 16 years as a member of
Congress, whether as a Senator or Representative.
Section 4.
This amendment shall take effect immediately upon ratification,
except that members of Congress who are barred from serving further
terms in office by this amendment may finish the term they are
currently serving at the time the amendment is ratified.
Section 5.
Any Citizen of the United States shall have standing in federal court
to challenge the status of any member of Congress who is in violation
of this article.
The above is, of course, merely our proposal. The Article V convention would have the final authority on the exact text of the amendment it proposes.
This text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0. This page uses material from the Wikipedia article “Term limits in the United States.” Photo courtesy of Biggunben.
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