Congressional Term Limits

Over the past year, conviction after conviction has gone on with regards to congress members and corruption. New ethics reform measures have been proposed and passed, which are all good. Things such as enforcing disclosure of lobbyist activity, banning lobbyist gifts and travels, prohibiting "dead of night" special interest provisions, etc... are good starts. However, all those proposals are the kite without the string. The string is CONGRESSIONAL TERM LIMITS. As long as elected officials have an incentive to think about the next election rather than the next generation, an inherent conflict of interest exists. The first argument I tend to hear against term limits is, "We have term limits. They're called elections. If we're dissatisfied, we can always vote them out." Well guess what the reelection rate is in the House and Senate. 55%? 60%? 75%? 90%? Even though Congress changed majorities last year, the senate re-election rate was still over 80%, and the house re-election rate was still over 90%. Notice that in the Senate (I'm unsure about the House), the longest serving people easily got re-elected. It's not necessarily because all those people deserved re-election. The reason for that high re-election rate is that the incumbents have a huge advantage just by being incumbents. Think of it like teacher tenure: unless if they do something really over the line, they're safe Voter apathy is the biggest reason. Voters are tired of long ballots, so they just go down and vote for a name they've heard of that they are just indifferent to. Unless they are extremely dissatisfied, they vote for the status quo. All incumbents have to do is remain acceptable to indifferent voters. Imagine if you just had to remain acceptable to your employer, and you would get a promotion or a pay raise. One may say, "well that's not fair, the voters are letting them keep the same job, not promoting them." Well, when congress members get reelected a few times, they pretty much earn the right, by seniority, to serve on committees, which helps guarantee even more reelections. Plus, they can vote for their own pay raise. So in a sense, they are being promoted just for remaining acceptable to their voters. Granted, we could try fixing this problem by making it easier for voters to be informed and understand what's going on. Now one may be saying, if we enact term limits, how will we determine who sits on committees? Well, do businesses promote people solely based on how long they've been there? Do students get better grades in school just based on how long they've been there? No. These things get determined by merit. Get a group of people together, even strangers. It won't take too long for them to realize who the leaders are and who is most competent in certain areas. More often than not, they choose correctly, and that's a better way to determine than by seniority. Granted, we could fix this problem by prohibiting committee appointments based on seniority Another thing that keeps the voters "happy" with their representative is something called pork. More importantly, the funding is not acquired through the federal competitive system. It is snuck in the bill and is never exposed when being voted for. But, we can fix that by outlawing pork barrel spending and requiring a balanced budget. Another incumbent advantage is when Congress draws its own district lines. That way, politicians choose their own voters. I thought voters were supposed to choose politicians. If one looks at the congressional map, it is a jigsaw puzzle because of this. Now granted, this can easily be fixed with making an independent panel draw the lines, which I support. However, singling out the incumbent advantage on this problem is narrow-minded, and I just wanted to be sure I addressed this problem Granted that can easily be fixed by making an independent panel draw the lines. If we enact these reforms, why would we need term limits? As long as politicians are able to make it a convenient career, they will have an incentive to think about the next election and not the next generation. For a little history, back in the days when they needed a horse and buggy to get to and from work, didn't pay so well, and didn't provide many benefits, elected officials treated it like a brief civic duty. We had statesman, not politicians. At this day and age, with more convenient travels and better pay/benefits, they will do what satisfies voters now and pass the problems on to the next generation. An example I have already mentioned is pork, providing immediate gratification now but passing the debt onto future generations. Other examples include the unwillingness to fix education because they'll lose teachers union support, don't vote for tort reform because that will lose trial lawyers' support, they don't fix campaign financing because they will lose support, they don't streamline the government because they'll lose public employee union support. One may hear about bills with these descriptions, few have any substance. Most of them are window dressing. On one hand pleasing the special interests by preserving the status quo, and on the other hand pleasing the population at large by making them think it's fixed just before this next election. The current system provides the incentive to do that. They have a bigger incentive to hold onto their jobs than to pass beneficial laws. So we shouldn't have any re-elections at all? Hold that thought Another argument against term limits is, "There are good ones who will be forced out, and we don't want that." You're right. I'm not saying we have no statesmen now, but they are far and few in comparison to what we used to have. Yes, good ones will be forced out too. However, due to the incumbent advantage, a lot of great individuals choose not to run. They are smart enough to know not to challenge an incumbent because it's a waste of time, money, and energy. So I think it is a fair tradeoff to get rid of the few good ones now in exchange for many good ones later. Back to the question about not having any re-election. Here's why that can be counterproductive: running for Congress is a tough job. A payoff of only one possible term might not be worth it to some good individuals. We need to find a medium of a certain amount of terms that still encourage people to run and provide the incentive to think about the next generation and not the next election Another argument against term limits is that the power of lobbyists will go up. The argument is, newly elected people end up being influenced by the lobbyists more because they don't know what they're doing. Whereas those who have been around have the experience and don't depend on lobbyists as much. Listen to the logic of that. Somehow, new legislators learn from lobbyists, and then as they go on, THEY DUMP THE LOBBYISTS?! When has that happened?! The ties incumbents have with lobbyists only grow stronger with time. These scandals have been with career politicians mostly, not first timers. Coincidence? I doubt it. Term limits breaks ties to lobbyists that career politicians have over time Thomas Jefferson said it best, "Whenever a man casts a longing eye on political office, a rottenness begins in his conduct"