Congressional Term Limits

1. I agree with you that ethics reforms are mostly window dressing. Nevertheless, I think they are marginally better than before. It's not saying much, but this isn't a point worth pursuing any further 2. Term limits are overwhelmingly approved by the people when on the ballot. The people overwhelmingly support Congressional term limits. The whole "we can always vote them out" argument isn't really all it's made out to be. It doesn't happen for reasons I've explained already, and that argument assumes that the incumbent will be so bad that voters will end up taking any challenger over him/her. And as you know, a constitutional amendment for term limits would require 2/3 vote by both houses, the president's signature, and ratification by 3/4 of the states. How much more "democratic" can one get? With regards to one's pork being another's beef, we should have objective standards, such as no adding any provisions in conference that were not present in either house's bill. 3. The circumstances of when Jefferson said it is irrelevant to the point of what he said. His point was that career politicians begin to rot, totally irrelevant to the 17th Amendment. Further, you argue that more people should have power, yet want to take away the people's power to elect their senators. Doesn't make much sense to me. Further, we should not even talk about repealing the 17th Amendment until we get rid of gerrymandering for the house. The senate is currently the more democratic body because of gerrymandering 4. No, if he only cares about being re-elected, then he has no incentive to do anything but please the special interests. That's exactly what goes on now. With term limits, citizen members of the private sector who just want to briefly serve, do some good, and then go back to their old jobs will finally have a chance. They're smart enough not to challenge an incumbent who has committed no crime because they know people vote for the bum they know over the bum they don't. Finally, I reject the idea that term limits would result in a more powerful executive branch. Term limits would break ties members of the legislative branch have with the executive branch. Also, many people in the private sector are heads and shoulders above our current politicians as far as learning ability, leadership, negotiating, and all other necessary qualities of being an elected official. More of these people would run with term limits, and coupled with breaking ties to the president, this would result in a more powerful legislative branch. 5. You comment about the feasibility of my "granted we could do this" ideas, yet propose ideas that if anything, are even less feasible. We're not here to debate the feasibility. Returning power to the people and repealing the 17th Amendment seems like an inherent contradiction. That takes away power from the people to elect their senators and gives power to the states. Calling me out for supporting Joe Biden in spite of my term limits view would be like me calling you out for supporting Ron Paul when Ron Paul in fact supports congressional term limits. I'm willing to bet your support for him has nothing to do with that, and my support for Joe Biden wasn't because he has been in the senate for a long time. I supported Biden because he is the most practical of all the candidates, best able to reach bipartisan consensus, and gave clear answers to the questions (here is the problem, here's what needs to be done, here's how I'll do it).