Resolved: The US federal goverment should pass a term limit ammendment

A) Term Limits Prevents Elected Official From Gaining Experience Pro says politicians should run for other positions in Congress once their term limits are over. This effectively invalidates his entire argument. He says to solve the experience problem, politicians should serve long terms, just in different positions. This proves that even with term limits, being a career politician is still possible (in fact Pro advocates it!) To say that two years is time to develop significant experience is laughable. With two year’s experience you are applying for entry level jobs in the private sector. Additionally, there are many many professions that require more than two years on the job training. To be a doctor you have to complete several years of residency. You need 5 years job experience before you can apply to be a licensed engineer. Almost every job fits into a tiered system where people with more experience hold more responsibility and authority. But with term limits, there is no one with experience to take those positions. All the legislators are freshman so no one has any job experience. No business would boot all employees after 10 years- this just amounts to preventing the accumulation of experience. Congress shouldn’t operate like that either. In my opening round I pointed out that legislators must be up to speed on an exceptionally wide range of issues. Currently, younger legislators rely on the expertise of more senior members for guidance on a wide range of issues. Term limits boot legislators out of office just as they are developing the expertise needed to deal with these issues. Term limits at the state level shows what happens when you remove experience from office. Term limited state have on average a much poorer ranking of healthcare policy: “Overall, the average [Best States for you Health] ranking for the fifteen states with term limits is 31st in all three rankings. The average ranking for the 35 states without term limits is 23rd. The reason term limits have such a significant effect on the health of a state’s population may be because term-limited politicians don’t have the time to come up to speed on complex health issues.”[1] B) Term Limits Shift Power to the Bureaucracy and Lobbyists Pro offers no reason why we should expect new politicians to have “common sense and integrity.” He just assumes this is the case and his source is merely a blog with a list of generic arguments. All of the “career politicians” Pro decries started out as new politicians, yet somehow they became, in Pro’s eyes, no longer tolerable. Simply being new to Congress doesn’t make you a paragon of virtue; new legislators are just as vulnerable to lobbyists and special interests (in fact they are more so, as I argued in my opening round). I cited in my opening round a study conducted by the University of Missouri that showed that term limiting state representatives actually gave MORE power to lobbyists. Lobbyists have no term limits, so as the legislators come and go it is the lobbyists who stick around and gain experience in how to run the government. Additionally, lobbyists are often much more familiar with the issues they represent. This means that all the experience that used to be stored in long-serving politicians becomes located solely in lobbyists. When new legislators find that they lack the experience to develop robust policy, the ever present “guidance” of the lobbyists becomes much more convincing. Keep in mind this is supported by the research of the Missouri study, while Pro’s claim is totally unsupported by evidence. Also, Pro offered no rebuttal to my point that term limits create regular “lame duck” legislators who know they cannot be re-elected. These legislators are totally unaccountable to the public since they do not have to worry about re-election. What prevents these legislators for selling out to special interest in their final term? Career politicians have to protect their career and so cannot upset their electorate by selling out. A term-limited politician does not have this concern and is free to bow to lobbyists during their final term. D) Term limits are Undemocratic Almost all the “career politicians” you cite were very well respected and liked by their electorate. Ted Kennedy and Ted Stevens were continuously re-elected because their constituency loved them. These are prime examples of the politicians we do NOT want to force out of office. I am sorry the Pro didn’t like these politicians, but their electorate thought they did a very good job and it is the electorate that these politicians were elected to serve- not Pro. Pro’s argument betrays the true undemocratic nature of term limit movements. He doesn’t like the politicians other parts of the country elects, so he wants to boot them out through term limits. Well, Alaska’s hero may be your villain, but it is Alaska’s decision to elect a representative. Similarly, there are many people who think Pro’s “only good career politician” Ron Paul is a villain- these people do not have the right to create legislation to force Ron Paul out of office anymore than Pro has the right to try and force McCain out of office. The claim that only death stops career politician is blatantly false. I pointed out in my opening round that Arlen Specter was defeated in his Senate race after 30 years of service. In 2010 alone 54 incumbents were defeated! [2] It is quite simply false that career politicians are invincible. New blood enters Congress with every election cycle, bringing with them the new ideas Pro says are needed in our government. New ideas are valuable in Congress, but so is experience and expertise. Currently our system allows for both; term limits would totally do away with experience. Incumbents do have a high win percentage, but this is often because their constituency is satisfied with their service. C) Term Limits are a Blunt Object Where a Scalpel is Needed Instead of talking about sweeping reform like term limits, we should be looking to more pointed reform like campaign finance, revising the seniority and chair system, etc. These more pointed reforms would solve all the problems Pro brings up without forcing out the experience in Congress, enabling lobbyists, and undermining democratic choice. This is the key point in this debate: the problems brought up by Pro can be solved through other reform measures. Term limits are a clumsy and dangerous tool and we should be looking to more specific reform. C1: “Spanbauer was only half way through his first term and he is already a career politician.” This quote from Pro illustrates my point exactly- new politicians aren’t magically more virtuous, they are just as susceptible to political gamesmanship and special interest as career politicians. C2: Extend my argument that reforming the chair and seniority system will solve the problem of “property rights” in different policy areas. Note that the Cato evidence Pro cites specifically says that term limits will solve by way of increasing turnover rate for chair positions- indicating that the problem here is with the chair system. This shows that targeted reform is the true solution, not term limits. At the same time, a certain amount of trust between politicians is necessary for political compromise. Political horse trading is a time honored tradition of the U.S. Congress; it allows opposing parties to come to agreements on complicated and contentious issues. In the absence of trust and political negotiation, the party system creates gridlock where nothing is able to be accomplished. C4: Again, the president serves a different function and is structured differently than Congress. The two are apples and oranges. We need to focus on what is right for Congress, not how to make Congress look like the presidency. [1]http://pgionfriddo.blogspot.com... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org...