We don’t actually have a law requiring congressmen step down after serving so many years, but in practical terms there’s been a huge turnover of elected officials in the last several years. In the House of Representatives, 47% of the body has been in office for six years or less. Nearly two-thirds have been in office for 10 years or less. In the Senate, 53% of the body has been in office for six years or less, and 65% have been in office ten years or less.
I don’t see that there’s any way to pin the current dysfunction in Congress on the one-third of members who have been around for more than twelve years. If anything, I trust the veteran politicians more than the junior ones to actually negotiate, get things done, and serve the best interests of the people.
So I contend that we have a modest, practical form of term limits right now, and the results show that it has failed the country.
Heh, I was actually thinking about how much of the Congress must be relatively new blood the other day after 2006-2008-2010 wave elections. Good to have numbers.
But I always thought term-limits for the legislature was kind of stupid. The idea that the problem with Congressmen was “too much experience at their job” is silly. If anything, I’d think term-limits would tend to push legislators towards thinking less about their actual job and more towards using their position to set themselves up for their next gig before they were termed out.
It’s been said by others but voters who advocate term limits as a way to get rid of “stale” long-serving legislators are like alcoholics who advocate prohibition as the only way to deal with their drinking problem.
It has been a disaster in California. Senior leadership turns over too quickly. Those in the lower house start planning on moving to the upper house when they get termed out. And the lobbyists are the only ones with any continuity, so they are writing bills for more junior representatives who don’t know the issues very well.
Ohio has the dumbest term limits ever for the General Assembly. The limit is eight years in a house, but the limitation expires after only four years, and the clock still ticks down while in the other house, so it’s theoretically possible for up to 50% of the legislature to trade places indefinitely and never actually leave the Statehouse. My state representative is my old state senator, and before that he was my state representative. I expect him to run for the state Senate next year, too.
I oppose term limits generally, but if we’re going to have them we shouldn’t fake them.
In Missouri it’s been claimed a number of times that the only people left who actually know the issues and how to write a bill are the lobbyists. Having seen both lobbyists and legislators up close, I tend to believe that’s an accurate assessment.
Missouri’s term-limited legislators (including our Congressmen) pretty much come in as a class and leave (some to be promoted) as a class.
No one has seniority, so every new class just picks a freshman to lead. That’s a dangerous dynamic.
With term limits, a good legislator is turfed after eight years, even if he had 12 good years in him. A bad legislator gets the same eight years, instead of being turfed after two. The voters aren’t paying attention, but there’s (completely arbitrary, and worryingly regular) turnover.
The NH House doesn’t have term limits, but there is a lot of turnover because they are only paid $100 a year.
It works well. People tend to want to serve because they are interested in it for it’s own sake, not as a path to riches on the backs of the taxpayers. Not how despite relatively modest salaries so many US Senators and House members manage to enrich themselves while in office.
I’d much rather have the NH system of citizen-legislators than the MA system of professional, mostly in it for life politicians who milk the state dry.
So, given the large turnover of Congress in the last decade, why isn’t Congress working as well as New Hampshire? If anything, Congress is getting worse, not better, during this period of turnover.
Is there a law preventing former legislators from ever taking jobs with companies that were effected by their legislation? Because otherwise the path to riches on the backs of taxpayers is pretty clear. Be good little corporate stooge for pennies today; rake in millions tomorrow.
When you compare the salaries of even the highest paid state legislators to even the smallest of state budgets (let alone corporate profits affected by state regulation) the relative importance of the salaries becomes clear.
If you want good people to serve without graft you need to pay them enough to support their families.
Whoops, missed this part. I thought you were complaining about the salaries themselves. OK, 2 questions. How do congresscritters enrich themselves in office? I’ve heard they can get insider information to help their investments but thought that they didn’t make anything (compared to the Beltway elite who aren’t on government salary) until, by not rocking the boat, they could expect easy and extremely profitable employment after they left office. And 2nd, what stops New Hampshire legislators from doing the same thing?
There are a bunch of reasons, some more complicated than others. But here are some easy explanations:
The smaller size of the government in NH.
There’s no sales tax or income tax. The government is very small in NH compared with MA. MA has lots of tax revenue coming in from it’s sales and income taxes and this is spent on lots of wasteful programs like the big dig or the turnpike that gives plenty of opportunity for cronyism and theft. By keeping the government small NH avoids these problems.
If a company rewarded every Representative that voted their way with a job as a VP they would quickly run out of room to hire them all.
Note that I was wrong about the salary. They get $200 a year.
The $200 a year salary.
This attracts the right sort of people. Down in MA there have been many instances of politicians being bribed, and it’s always short money. $1,000 for a liquor license. $5,000 for a job on the MBTA. That sort of thing. These guys get paid about $80,000 a year or so and that’s a lot of money to the sort of hacks that get attracted to state politics in MA.
President Fox decided to get tough with the cartels in Mexico. They arrested various cartel leaders and started making good progress on breaking them up.
The result was that violence and anarchy have increased dramatically as various factions fight for power and cartels break up in absence of senior leadership.
Similarly, the US Congress is so far gone that I would expect it to get worse instead of better as the turnover occurs.
So a grand or five is worth a lot to someone who earns $80K but not to someone who earns $200? Do you imagine that eighty thousand a year is a lot of money to the Massachusetts elite? That they’d give up lucrative salaries to settle for that pittance? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of anyone other than debt ridden farmers in the late 16th century seeking legislative office for the salary. I mean, patronage jobs sure. People take them for the income. But legislating is real work and time consuming unless you live in some backwater like Texas. The salary is important in that it means that people other than the wealthy can serve.
Do you REALLY think they’re not scratching someone’s back while they’re in office, so that they will get scratched in return once they’re out of office? It would be **monumentally **naive to think otherwise, because it happens, oh, everywhere else.
My American wife is in favour of term limits, although I’ve never agreed with her. I’ll have to quote her the comment about term limits being like prohibitionism!