Is it Time for Congressional Term Limits?
In proposing term limits for members of the Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson stated that a limit was necessary “to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress.” The Constitution does not include a provision for Congressional term limits, but prior to the Civil War many members of Congress in fact served only a few terms. However, as the power and importance of the federal government has grown, the incentive to seek a career as a federal politician has also grown.
On November 10, 2009, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) introduced a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution to limit the number of terms that a member of Congress may serve to 3 in the House of Representatives and 2 in the Senate. The resolution, cosponsored by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) has been referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. As an amendment to the Constitution, passage requires a two-thirds majority approval in the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states. In introducing the amendment, Senator DeMint said:
“Americans know real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians. As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buyoff special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power. I have come to realize that if we want to change the policies coming out of Congress, we must change the process itself. Over the last 20 years, Washington politicians have been reelected about 90% of the time because the system is heavily tilted in favor of incumbents. If we really want to put an end to business as usual, we’ve got to have new leaders coming to Washington instead of rearranging the deck chairs as the ship goes down.”
Senator Coburn added:
“The best way to ensure we are truly a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, is to replace the career politicians in Washington with citizen legislators who care more about the next generation than their next election. The power of incumbency has created an almost insurmountable advantage for Washington politicians. Incumbency allows politicians to raise millions of dollars in campaign funds in exchange for earmarks. Incumbency gives Congress the power to raise money for itself – Congress just approved itself an increase of nearly $250 million from the U.S. Treasury that members will spend to promote themselves. Finally, with redistricting incumbents can choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives. Term limits is the best way to break this cycle.”
Proponents of term limits seek:
- More competitive elections, bringing new candidates and ideas into the process on a more regular basis and eliminating some of the inequalities that currently benefit incumbents. In addition to generally greater name recognition, political contributions and media access, incumbents enjoy the benefits of franking (free mail to constituents) along with taxpayer-funded staff, offices and travel. Incumbents maintain their comfortable salaries while campaigning, a benefit many challengers do not share. State legislators routinely redraw congressional districts to benefit incumbents, and both the House and Senate maintain lawyers specifically to handle term limits litigation.
- A more transparent government with greater access by the people, and a significant reduction in pork-barrel spending. Freshman politicians, by their nature, are more closely connected with those who elect them, reducing the need to buy ongoing loyalties with spending sprees designed around re-election campaigns.
- Significantly reduced influence by special interest groups. Career politicians build long-standing relationships with lobbyists which are often extremely lucrative. These lobbying “investments” yield much smaller returns when term limits are imposed.
- An end to control of the legislative process by those who are most out of touch with their constituents and the realities outside the beltway, a situation clearly demonstrated by the debate over health care over the past twelve months.
Opponents, on the other hand, argue that:
- Term limits are undemocratic in that they restrict choice. In fact, term limits should expand choice as the significant advantages of incumbents will largely disappear, reducing barriers to challengers.
- The most experienced legislators with the greatest understanding of the legislative process would be eliminated. This argument presumes that freshman legislators would have no previous involvement or knowledge of the process, when in fact most elected officials have previous experience at the state level and/or through staff-level positions. Further, no other profession requires years of on-the-job training in order to be effective in the position. The legislature is no exception. Term limits could attract more talent from more diverse fields as the need for years and years of experience in order to wield significant influence disappears.
- What is needed is campaign finance reform, not term limits. In fact both are needed and one does not preclude the other. Having career politicians presume to write campaign finance reform laws is tantamount to putting the fox in charge of access to the hen house.
- Unelected people – lobbyists, staffers and bureaucrats – would effectively run Congress while freshman legislators learn the ropes. As noted previously, it is far more likely that relationships with lobbyists would be diminished and would not continue as new legislators come into office. Turnover in both staffers and bureaucrats would likely increase, with greater focus directed toward legislation rather than re-election activities. Term limits may actually provide incentive to work for reforms that transfer more power away from bureaucrats and back to Congress.
- Politicians at the end of their terms will see no political advantage to following the will of the people and every advantage to seeking personal gain. Certainly we see little propensity today to follow the will of the people, but this argument also fails in that lobbyists lose their ability to use funds to generate long-term influence. This again argues for campaign finance and lobbyist reform, not against term limits.
It is hardly coincidental that those primarily opposed to Congressional term limits are career politicians and special interest groups who support them. Term limits would eliminate incumbent election advantages, reduce incentives for wasteful spending, reduce influence of special interest groups and eliminate concentrations of power with career politicians out of touch with their constituents. The volume of legislation passed contrary to the wishes of the American people over the last several years should be ample justification to support such an amendment.
http://www.heritage.org/research/governmentreform/bg994.cfm
(12 votes, average: 4.58 out of 5)
Loading ...
Fiscal Irresponsibility
Since the 2008 campaign we have been lectured by President Obama ad nauseam about fiscal responsibility, about not leaving a mountain of debt for our children, about ongoing deficit spending.
November 25, 2008:
“In these challenging times, when we are facing both rising deficits and a sinking economy, budget reform is not an option. It is an imperative,” Obama said. “We cannot sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness, or exist solely because of the power of a politicians, lobbyists, or interest groups. We simply cannot afford it. This isn’t about big government or small government. It’s about building a smarter government that focuses on what works. That is why I will ask my new team to think anew and act anew to meet our new challenges…. We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way.”
State Sovereignty Letter
The following template was designed for use in communicating with members of state government regarding state sovereignty bills. A copy of the document can be downloaded by clicking on the link provided to the right under Links. You can use the Tenth Amendment Center link provided in the BlogRoll to determine whether such a bill has been sponsored in your state and the status thereof.
I would like to appeal for your assistance in reasserting the sovereign rights of the states, including our beloved state of _____________, over the unconstitutional expansion of the federal government.
Amendment X to the United States Constitution states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Yet as early as 1803 the federal government took upon itself to start interpreting the Constitution through establishment of the doctrine of judicial review in Marbury vs. Madison, thereby recognizing the authority of the courts to declare statutes unconstitutional.
Since that time there has been an ongoing effort at the federal level to interpret the Constitution in a manner contrary to that intended by our Founding Fathers, usurping the rights of the states. We now find ourselves in a time where there are efforts in Washington to expand the role of the federal government to unprecedented levels, including expanded authority over education, health care and energy. We now have federal ownership and management of the U.S. automobile industry and major financial institutions. We are mortgaging the future of this country under the guise of solving an economic problem that “only the federal government can solve”, when in reality the federal government played a significant role in its creation. Where does it stop?
The federal government is a creation of the states and is therefore restricted to those roles and rules as laid down by the states in the Constitution. The states have the right to ignore and to nullify regulations laid down by the federal government which are contrary to what is expressly permitted by the Constitution. Now is the time for state governments to exercise their constitutional authority over Washington, to take back the powers which belong to them. An increasing number of states are reasserting their individual states’ rights to sovereignty as guaranteed under Amendment X, and it is time for ____________ to join this list (OR and I am proud to hear that my beloved state of _____________ has joined that list). I respectfully request that you sponsor a state sovereignty bill (support the state sovereignty bill) and send a clear message to Washington on behalf of the people of ______________ that the era of federal irresponsibility must come to an end.
“Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.” –Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800. ME 10:167
Thank you for your service.
This post is for information only and as such comments have been turned off.
Connecting the Dots on Health Care
Marsha Blackburn, US Congressman representing the 7th District in Tennessee and current Deputy Whip for the 111th Congress, has done a bit of homework on mammograms and H.R. 3692:
This week, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, published a study recommending that women under 50 do not need to receive annual mammograms. The study created an uproar in Washington while angering and confusing women across America.Setting the scientific evidence in the study, its methodology, and the troubling implications for women’s health aside, I’d like to show how the Democrat health care bill, H.R 3962 (Full Text Linked Here) will give this troubling study the force of law and result in limited access to mammograms for women enrolled in a health insurance exchange plan or the public option. In short, connecting the dots through H.R. 3962 will illustrate how these regulations place us all on the slippery slope to health care rationing.STEP 1: Provider Networks And Essential BenefitsGoing back to the text of H.R. 3962; on page 1329, line 21 the bill goes into more detail about the Task Force’s recommendations. It says “all recommendations of the Preventive Services Task Force [the panel that issued this week's mammogram recommendation]… as in existence on the day before the date of the enactment of this Act shall be considered to be recommendations of the Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services…” It goes on to say, and I find this remarkable, that the Preventive Services Task Force automatically becomes the Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services.
Lets start with the full text of H.R. 3962 as finally passed by the House this month. Page 106 of the bill, starting at line 7, sets forth guidelines that all health insurance plans and the public option must comply with. Page 107 goes on to define these plans as “provider networks.”
Jumping a few pages ahead, to page 110, we see on line 3 that the bill lays out precisely what essential health care benefits must be in these approved plans. Those services begin to be outlined on page 111, line 8 . Service 8 (number “8” on line 1 of page 112) says that “preventive services, including those services with a grade of A or B by the Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services” must be covered.
STEP 2: The Task Force
Who is this Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services? Well, their authority begins to be laid out in Section 2301 of the bill, starting at line 18 of page 1296. Their specific authority begins to be spelled out on page 1301 at line 15. The bill says that The Task Force will identify clinical preventive services for review.” The Task Force will “review the scientific evidence related to the benefits, effectiveness, appropriateness, and costs of clinical preventive services.” (page 1302 lines 1-3) The Task Force will then, “determine whether subsidies and rewards meet The Task Force’s standards for a grade of A or B.” (page 1302 lines 14-16)
STEP 3: Services Graded And Provided
On page 1317 at line 21 the bill reiterates that the Secretary of Health and Human Services must include those A and B graded services among essential benefits that all health care plans must include.
Here is where we have to inject a little common sense into H.R. 3962. The bill mandates that all Americans must be able to purchase plans in the exchange and be provided these essential benefits; in this case, preventative care ranked with a grade of A or B. This will be enormously expensive for private plans and for the Federal Government under the pubic option since everyone must be covered.
Because there is no mandate or incentive in the bill to provide coverage for services graded as C or below, it is reasonable to conclude that costs will keep health care plans from providing these services.
STEP 4: What This Means For Mammograms
The very mammogram study that we heard so much about this week, the one conducted by the Preventive Services Task Force, will automatically be the guideline for determining what grade mammograms for women under 50 receive. As you can see here the study recommended a grade of “C” for that service. This all means that getting a mammogram under the age of 50 is not considered an “essential benefit” and will not be covered under the new health care regime.
You are welcome to argue with the conclusions reached by Congressman Blackburn, but by following the convoluted trail created by H.R. 3962 she has demonstrated just one of the ways in which the current healthcare bills under debate will negatively impact both choice and the long-term health of Americans. If more of our elected representatives would follow Congressman Blackburn’s example and take the time to read and follow the bills, you can be sure many other examples would be found and discussed. Please contact your Senators and Congressmen and demand that they do so, for the health of America.
Congressman Blackburn’s Web Site
Anysoldier
The tragic loss of lives at Fort Hood on Thursday, November 5, should bring to the forefront of everyone’s mind that our troops put their lives on the line for the safety and security of our nation. Personal views regarding the wars and politics aside, we Americans need to show our support of our brave men and women in uniform.
The holidays are upon us, and so many of our troops are far from their loved ones. If you know someone who is deployed, send them a card or care package to let him or her know your support. (more…)
The Least We Can Do
As our Commander in Chief contemplates whether to substitute his own judgment for the advice of the General he appointed to shake up a troubled war effort in Afghanistan, our soldiers are dying.
As our President considers his options in the eighth meeting with his war council this afternoon, our soldiers are dying.
As Time magazine reports that “secondary trauma” may have driven Major Nidal Malik Hasan to massacre 13 US soldiers at Fort Hood, our soldiers are dying.
As the politically correct turn a blind eye to inadequate diligence and communication as to Major Hasan’s actions and words, clear signals of a problem brewing, our soldiers are dying.
As the liberal media refuses to identify radical Islamic fanaticism as a motivating force behind the Fort Hood shootings, our soldiers are dying.
As we try to find new, more comfortable words to describe the war on terror, our soldiers are dying.
During deployment, our heroic soldiers and their families live in constant fear for their lives, fear of an enemy unlike any other this country has ever faced; an enemy that will gladly sacrifice civilians, women and children, with no remorse, in order to further their cause and kill the infidels. The least we can do is provide them with a sense of direction and purpose, with the comfort that there is a plan, that their Commander in Chief is decisive and resolute. The least we can do is provide them with assurance that when they are home, on our own soil and in the confines of their own base, they will indeed be safe and that we will not allow a misguided sense of all things politically correct to prevent us from ensuring that safety. On this Veteran’s Day, indeed, every day, that’s the least we can do. (more…)
More Inconvenient Truth
“You Lie!”
That unscripted remark by South Carolina GOP Representative Joe Wilson during President Obama’s healthcare address to Congress last month was a prime example of the level of dissent and anger which has surrounded the healthcare debate. There is significant disagreement as to not only the nature and extent of the problem with the American healthcare system, but also as to the solution. The misrepresentations and distortions have reached historic levels, and gutter-level political discourse has at times reached epic proportions. No tax increases on the middle class. Death squads. No coverage for abortions. Kill Grandma. No coverage for illegal aliens. Increase competition with a public option. The list of talking points heard nearly every day across the country is long and at times ugly. (more…)
Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize – Well Deserved or “Embarrasing Joke”?
President Barak Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, an award that drew both warm praise and sharp criticism. In awarding the prize to the President, the Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” The administration itself was both humbled and stunned by the announcement early Friday morning. The award was particularly stunning given the nomination deadline of February 1, less than two weeks after the Obama presidency began. President Obama joins a variety of past recipients, including former Vice President Al Gore, President Jimmy Carter, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King Jr. (more…)
Should Holder Investigate Alleged CIA Interrogation Abuses?
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appears to be poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects. Holder envisions a narrow inquiry that would focus on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that interpreted anti-torture laws.
President Obama has publicly discouraged such an investigation, but months ago left the door open for Holder to make the call. An inquiry would likely drive a new wedge between the CIA and the Justice Department, as well as create additional political tension in Washington already aggravated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claims in May that the CIA “mislead us (Congress) all the time”.
The U.S. anti-torture statute requires proving that an interrogator “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering,” a challenging legal hurdle. In April, Holder decreed “We’re going to follow the evidence wherever it takes us, follow the law wherever that takes us….no one is above the law” when asked whether government officials would face prosecution over coercive interrogation techniques.
Tell that to the voters in Philadelphia, who were threatened on November 4 by nightstick-wielding members of the New Black Panther Party. Holder gave them a pass, even after the government prevailed by default when the Panthers ignored court process. In that case, other considerations apparently outweighed Mr. Holder’s desire to following the evidence. The Panthers who turned out to be above the law included Jerry Jackson, a credentialed Democratic-party poll-watcher who brays on MySpace about “Killing Crakkkas.” Thanks to Holder’s decision Jackson is back in business, having obtained new poll-watcher credentials just days after his case was dismissed.
Is this investigation politically motivated and yet another distraction from ongoing domestic issue debates? Does it threaten to set a dangerous precedent that will undermine the effectiveness of the CIA out of concern for retroactive rule changes applied by future administrations? Or is there a legitimate cause of action, in the interest of protecting America’s moral standing as champions of human dignity and individual rights?
The Death of Rational Discussion
Franking is a process by which Congress, the President and some cabinet members correspond with the public using their signature on the envelope instead of a stamp. These mailings to constituents are limited by budget allotment and of course are paid for with taxpayer dollars. The Franking Commission approves the content of materials to prevent abuse of the privilege.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) sends a regular newsletter to his constituents. When he recently attempted to mail a newsletter to his district regarding healthcare, he was forced to remove the following language before Democrats on the commission would approve payment:
“The below quote is from President Obama at a recent town hall on health care, responding to a question on possible medical treatment for an elderly woman who had heart problems and received a pacemaker:
‘Look, the first thing for all of us to understand that is we actually have some — some choices to make about how we want to deal with our own end-of-life care… we as a culture and as a society [can start] to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves…at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.’
