The US Federal Government Should Not Pass a Congressional Term Limit Amendment

I appoligize for the late response, my internet kept glitching making it hard to save my argument, so I'll be trying again and hopefully it doesn't get deleted. You'll have to fogive me if I seem a bit rushed as I'm up against the clock here. Contention 1: Subversion of the Democratic Process My opponent claims that Term limits are harmful to the Democratic process, but this is unlikely since the overwhelming majority of Americans actually support term limits [1]. It is the responsibility of the US Federal Government to listen to the people and they have not done so. This turns the argument to my favor since we have to see that our nation was founded on Democratic principles and here we have a government who will not limit itself as the people, an overwhelming majority, supports this idea. This aspect trumps the area where people want to vote for incumbents since this is an issue they want more and it has a direct impact upon the political process in the US. My opponent brings up how people can just vote out politicians, but it's not that simple. We can see that the incumbents have an advantage in elections where they win way more often than not. I have shown that in the US Congress, the re-election rate for incumbents was 97% the highest while the lowest was at 82% in the past 52 years [2]! This shows that even though we may want to elect our politicians out of office, we can see that they have a huge advantage that makes it hard for any challenger to be able to actually get elected to replace the incumbent. This is an obsticle to our political process and must be removed in order to have complete democracy with competition. Under the status quo, this isn't the case. Contention 2: Lame Duck TermsMy opponent brings up how politicians may create legislation where it goes against the people they represent. This already happens in the status quo though. Many carear politicans are now citizens of Washington DC, not their home state. This can be seen in the case of Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, where he voted against the farm bill in a state where a large portion of their economy is agriculture [3]. How is this any different than the status quo? My opponent is also forgetting about weak term limits. If weak term limits are enacted, then the politicians would still be able to run for re-elections again after the waiting period is over. This would effectively negate this argument by my opponent. Pro goes on to bring up these numbers, but he is insinuating that these politicians would not go and do anything in Congress. This is unlikely as many events happen across this nation that would require action and these politicians would have no choice, but to do something about it. Contention 3: The Benefits of Expierienced Congressmen.My opponent argues that of a creation of lack of expierence, but we do have to see here that with weak term limits, as I have brought up in my Round 2 argument, actually helps this case. It gets more politicians involved and many can opt to run again after a time limit. After this, these politicians can choose to run again for re-election of their seat or go for another one. This would help increase the quantity of expierenced politicians out there and they would make the political process better as with more expierenced poltiicans, they would be able to get more laws across that otherwise may not have occured. People can then elect to run again where they would have more expierence than the other politicians providing senior leadership. When we look at the free market, we can see that this favors my case. When there a a restricted supply, which occurs in the status quo, then we see the value of these politicians become inflated, higher than their actual value. On the other hand, if we increase supply, we can see that the value would fall, but we would have a great deal of more politicans. The market, for a short period of time be under equilibrium, while in the status quo it's above, the market, in this case the voters, would root out the ineffective and bad politicians as they would have more time to analyze them with weak term limits if they choose to run again, or they would allow them back in if they did a great job and prevent new ones from entering the field. My opponent gives a sports analogy, but this isn't entirely true. Many teams may keep some players for a few years before changing them out for new ones while buidling around centerpiece players. With Weak Term limits, this would be the case as more successful polticians would stay around while bad ones are rooted out and replaced with new ones. Thomas Jefferson himself had once said, "Bodies of men, as well as individuals, are subseptable to the spirit of tryanny." [4]Studies have shown that the longer that a politician stays in office that the greater amount that they will end up supporting increased government spending and the need for the increased size in government [5]. More and more a politician stays we can see that they simply listen to the lobbist in order to get campaign finance for their next election. When they are limited with Weak Term limits, they are less likely to do so since they don't have to worry about re-election all that much, but instead they would work to actually represent their own distrints .Sources1. (http://www.gallup.com...) 2. ( http://www.opensecrets.org...) 3. (https://americanbridgepac.org...) 4. ( https://sites.google.com...) 5. ( http://object.cato.org...)