Both houses should have a term limit to prevent complacency and entrenchment. Voters don’t seem to care about these elections and usually reelect the incumbent without thinking. Too many people stay in Congress for more than 30 years. The longer someone stays in, the more corporate interests they have behind them. Also, this kills any chance of innovative solutions, because decade after decade, the same people are there. The US was built on the principle that with enough support from the public, anyone can lead. That will not happen today unless you wait for a current Senator to die or retire.
Term limits are fucking idiocy. Term limits in state governments have led to amateur hour in the state house, “led” by sophomore legislators frantically try to line up their next jobs while the freshmen are bamboozled by lobbyists, bureaucrats, and pressure groups.
As someone experiencing what term limits do at a state level (in Michigan), I hope the SCOTUS never changes its mind on this and allows it to happen.
Our state legislature is now run by completely inexperienced individuals who have no history with each other, have no future with each other to work toward, no need to build alliances, work across the aisle or deal with the consequences of their shitty and reckless legislation. It’s a steaming pile of extremist morons who are only passing laws that will get them the most money from lobbyists with absolutely no regard to what the residents actually want.
There are already term limits. 6 years for a Senator, 2 years for a Representative, 4 years for President. The additional limit of two terms for President is idiotic and has been a disaster so far. The only thing missing is term limits for judges. They should be pretty long, but Judge for life is a bad idea.
This. Once I finally grasped the implications, I did a 180 on my term limits position.
The arguments for term limits always forget or ignore the fact that government only works when the people running it are skilled, experienced, and secure.
The idea that anyone can step off the street and run things forgets the fact that government is difficult and complicated.
Anyone who believes that everything has an easy answer is going to just Dick things up.
And because they have no long term stakes in being political leaders, they are essentially unaccountable. You end up with either fanatics or tools of contributors.
Term limits have been an unmitigated disaster at the state and local levels.
Well, just to play devil’s advocate, it’s not too surprising that you get amateur hour at the state level, but there’s no reason to believe that you’re going to get unseasoned pols at the federal level. Don’t most Congresscritters start out at the state level before being electing to their federal positions?
Trump
Carson
Perot
My post said “elected”. None of those has been elected. And none has ever run for Congress, either.
This is interesting to me (my wife - American but living in the UK - advocates such term limits). Do you have any links to demonstrate this?
Ted Cruz had never held elective office before becoming My Jr Senator.
The problem is voter apathy.
Ah, I should have said “most” instead of all. Oh wait, I did.
Aren’t commitee positions determined by seniority? I can imagin returning a known crook with congressional influence over electing an idealist dilettante who has none.
So do I understand you correctly that we the sheeple are a bunch of idiots and someone more enlightened needs to do our thinking for us?
:dubious:
People in Congress in fact do get bounced out. I’m guessing it just isn’t happening in the quantity and frequency you would like.
Fiorina. (Ran but did not win.) Moynihan. Jim Buckley. Elizabeth Warren. That’s off the top of my head. Trump and Carson are good examples of inexperienced candidates getting a lot of support.
You know, but others might not, that in California term limits have led to lobbyists being the only really experienced people in Sacramento. It has hardly let to good government. And perhaps a big reason why Jerry Brown has been so successful is that he had experience as governor.
This. It is the reason why when government officials overseeing billions of dollars of budget and tens of thousands of people get paid middle management wages the masses complain that they are overpaid.
My friend was the treasure or a major state. When the governor lost he got a job in private industry with a tiny fraction of the responsibility - and a major increase in pay. That makes no sense.
We already have term limits – it’s called the ballot box.
Before someone snarks on this, I meant treasurer. Though he’s a good guy. And honest.
Sure, which gives them experience in government processes and in the types of issues that come up in their state.
The process experience would be valuable in making the jump to the federal level, but there could be a steep learning curve on the actual issues they have to decide, different from what they knew about at the state level.