Term Limits for members of Congress

I’d rather have incumbency candidates eliminated. You can serve as many terms as you like but you aren’t allowed to run for re-election. You have to sit out a term before you are allowed to get back in. The same goes for trying for a different office. You have to resign your current post by January 1 in order to run in the following November election.

Yes, I am in favor of term limits. And no, I would not support anything that allowed them to rotate on and off. Ted Cruz proposed legislation to this end, and it got nowhere. No surprise there though. Politicians love their power.

This is one reason why I'm voting for the candidate running for the Senate in TN that vowed two term limits and then adios. I hope he wins.

hislegacy said:

Thoughts?

Time to stop career politicians.

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Why? Unprofessional congresscritters would not be an improvement.

Vote and say why?

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I voted "unlimited" for two reasons. 1) Let the people decide who they want to represent them. 2) There is value in experience and institutional knowledge. If you arbitrarily throw people out of office after a mere four years, then who will know what is really going on? I think your way will encourage political machines to take control with no accountability.

Term limits can rob Congress of badly needed expertise, but i would support a mandatory retirement age of 75.
I would have preferred a younger candidate than Biden or Trump, but it is clear which one is less qualified.

Your congress people should sit in 4 year blocks like the senators do. Two year terms is crazy, especially in a voluntary voting system where you have to spend money just to convince people to vote in the first place. It's hardly surprising nothing gets done if they have to spend 50% of their time getting reelected.

Also mandatory retirement age, at 65.

DaisyDay said:

Why? Unprofessional congresscritters would not be an improvement.

I voted "unlimited" for two reasons. 1) Let the people decide who they want to represent them. 2) There is value in experience and institutional knowledge. If you arbitrarily throw people out of office after a mere four years, then who will know what is really going on? I think your way will encourage political machines to take control with no accountability.

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Basically this. Term limits is how lobbyists take over.

Tanj said:

Your congress people should sit in 4 year blocks like the senators do. Two year terms is crazy, especially in a voluntary voting system where you have to spend money just to convince people to vote in the first place. It's hardly surprising nothing gets done if they have to spend 50% of their time getting reelected.

Also mandatory retirement age, at 65.

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Senators sit for 6 year terms.

Tanj said:

Your congress people should sit in 4 year blocks like the senators do. Two year terms is crazy, especially in a voluntary voting system where you have to spend money just to convince people to vote in the first place. It's hardly surprising nothing gets done if they have to spend 50% of their time getting reelected.

Also mandatory retirement age, at 65.

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This.

Plus reducing campaign time to two months. One month for the primary, one month for the general. Make it illegal to campaign during the rest of the term.

Make them work the rest of the time.

hislegacy said:

Thoughts?

Time to stop career politicians.

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What benefit do you feel this would bring?

hislegacy said:

Vote and say why?

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I voted unlimited. The simple fact is that unless we put a bunch of new laws in place regarding money and how the government functions setting term limits is counter productive. Who would go through the bruising ordeal of an election just to be kicked out?

Tanj said:

Your congress people should sit in 4 year blocks like the senators do. Two year terms is crazy, especially in a voluntary voting system where you have to spend money just to convince people to vote in the first place. It's hardly surprising nothing gets done if they have to spend 50% of their time getting reelected.

Also mandatory retirement age, at 65.

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I think two year terms is fine, just that you need to get rid of private funding of campaigns. Publicly fund campaigns, so that they don't have to spend half their time in office fund raising and aren't whoring themselves out to special interests, and can spend 22 months (if the two month limit on campaigning is codified) actually "on the job."

GreatLakes4Ever said:

I’d rather have incumbency candidates eliminated. You can serve as many terms as you like but you aren’t allowed to run for re-election. You have to sit out a term before you are allowed to get back in. The same goes for trying for a different office. You have to resign your current post by January 1 in order to run in the following November election.

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That's an AWESOME idea.

Belk said:

. Who would go through the bruising ordeal of an election just to be kicked out?

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I think that's kind of the point. People doing it as a service rather than a career. Although, it might not make it so brutal because you're not stepping into the ring with a bunch of career politicians?

An argument I found compelling is that term limits would tend to reduce the clout of the congress people compared with staff and lobbyists.

I voted unlimited. Besides the reasons already articulated, the only way we have to keep politicians accountable is for them to desire reelection. If they know they can't be reelected, they will just ignore the voice of their constituents.

hedrick said:

An argument I found compelling is that term limits would tend to reduce the clout of the congress people compared with staff and lobbyists.

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This is exactly the trouble with term limits. Institutional knowledge is valuable in government. With congressmen term-limited, the institutional knowledge would just move to staff and lobbyists, who would be the real powers behind the thrones.

An honestly, most Congressmen don't stick around very long. Of 430 current members of the House, only 187 (less than half) have served more than 4 terms. Just 61 have been around more than 20 years.

With the length of Senate terms, only 7 have served more than 4. Heck, more than half (65) have served two terms or less

KarateCowboy said:

I think that's kind of the point. People doing it as a service rather than a career. Although, it might not make it so brutal because you're not stepping into the ring with a bunch of career politicians?

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I understand the idea of doing it for service, that is certainly appealing. The issue I see is that is not the current environment and simply setting term limits will not get us there. I think we would need to figure out how to shift the culture substantively in order to make that sort of culture realistic.

hislegacy said:

psssst... the US senators serve a six years term, not four.

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So Illuvatar said, in this thread, 90 minutes before you.

iluvatar5150 said:

Senators sit for 6 year terms.

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