Should congress have term limits?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

Apparently some folks here are under the impression that the absence of term limits is an anathema to democracy. This strikes me as absurd on the surface of it, given the definition of democracy. Not that I'm against term limits.

So then, do you favor term limits in Congress? Should Byrd get the boot? Kennedy? Pelosi? Biden?

They've certainly amassed a great deal of influence in their home state, certainly giving themselves an (unfair?) advantage, which as far as I can tell is the only legitimate argument for term limits.

[IndianaJones]

1. no...But I'd like to see Byrd go. nt.

[yourout]

2. I used to say no term limits but there is enough dead weight on ....

both sides of the isle that I now think term limits would open the doors and let in some much needed fresh air.

That an it would take a big dent out of the constant fundraising and being more worried about getting re-elected than doing the peoples work.

I sometimes wonder if being in Congress is an addiction and the elected folks get so hooked on being there they forget why they went in the first place.

[Orsino]

3. Probably.

That a Congressional representative is by definition for sale before ever taking office is perhaps the big problem with our attempted democracy. Term limits can help keep the lobbyists and the reps from developing lifelong symbiotic relationships, but this is treating the symptom rather than the disease.

Ban corporate campaign donations, reestablishing this as bribery, and you won't have to term-limit the most corrupt of 'em.

[MonkeyFunk]

4. no

term limits have been a nightmare here in California.

You limit the representatives, but the lobbyists stay on forever. They end up becoming the only people with accumulated knowledge.

We have term limits that are better known as "elections".

[Warpy]

5. The founding fathers didn't foresee an industry

growing up around Congressmen and fundraising, or that Congress would be an attractive enough job for men to want to do it for a lifetime, or even past a working lifetime. Thurmond was a joke during his final two terms--that's 12 years, kids--due to extreme age and infirmity. Nor did the founding fathers foresee the great advantage an incumbent has in getting publicity, getting his/her name in the press, gaining name recognition, and how many morons vote on name recognition, alone.

Personally, I think 18 years is sufficient for either House. That's 9 terms in the House and 3 in the Senate. That would encourage participation later in life, when money has been made in the private sector and one hopes a certain amount of wisdom has been gained about how difficult it is to do just that.

Along with nailing the revolving door between lobbying and government completely shut, term limits might be a reform whose time has come.

[Bright Eyes]

12. My thoughts exactly NT

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. Is that a socialist or capitalist teapot option? n/t

[Nye Bevan]

7. No.

Term limits assume that voters are too stupid to realize when someone has had the job for too long.

In fact I am not in favor of presidential term limits, either. There are no term limits in the UK or Australia but the voters there were perfectly capable of realizing when Margaret Thatcher and John Howard had overstayed their welcome.

And how different this country would have been today if Bill Clinton had won a 3rd term (which he surely would have).

[Jack Bone]

8. I'm a little teapot...LOL

I don't think term limits matter much, given the strength of the lobbyist stranglehold over our Reps.
If "The old guard" were to be eliminated by these term limits, there would just be a new, fresher face version reflecting our overall problem. As Townshend wrote..."Meet the new boss...same as the old boss.." :patriot:

[JFN1]

9. Hell, yes!!!!

They become too harshly addicted to the money, power, and lifestyle.

[defendandprotect]

10. Didn't vote because corruption exists in either case ---

It took the GOP a long time to overturn honest Dems BECAUSE incumbents were more secure --
they had to be heavily targeted --- in some cases by the CIA where some of these reps
were handcapping them --- !!!

So -- in that case --- a lack of term limits were working for us --

The GOP finally began the "term limits" propaganda via Newt Gingrich --- remember?

And that knocked out a lot of powerful Dems ---

Right now, if term limits were going to work for creating change, who'd be voting for it ---
Dems either?

We need a lot of positive change --- but the problem is that no one in Congress -- Dem or Repug --- is going to vote for it ---

nationalize oil?
electric cars?
addressing Global Warming with more than light bulbs!?

IRV
public financing
ending reign of FED -- a private bank
putting corporations back in the box --- ???



Meanwhile, the Founders were very stingy with reps --- the House should be much larger --
even at its institution, the House was too small ---
I think we have something like 750,000/??? citizens per rep?
Probably higher now --
In Great Britain, they are one rep for about every 75,000.
And reps easily overturned --- every two year campaigns

THEN . . . the Senate is 6 years . . .
So technically it would take you 18 years to overturn the whole Congress ---
Well, maybe 12 if you started now ---

The Founders did that to brake the people's house ---

[Breeze54]

11. Sure!

:P

[Ghost in the Machine]

13. Not just yes, but HELL yes!

then again, I think there should be a retirement at age 65 also...

Why do we need 70 & 80 year old people in our government deciding what's good for us when they're still stuck in the 50's in their thinking?

I've stated this before and got responses like "well what about Ted Kennedy"? or "what about John Conyers"? or "what about Robert Byrd"?

Ted Kennedy - He has had a great career as a public servant, but maybe he should clear the way for someone younger and more progressive to step in. He could do a lot for the people of his state in the private sector too.

John Conyers - He's had a great career as a public servant too, but lately he seems to be losing his grip on reality. He hasn't stayed consistent with his previous work. He's also been acting like some kind of pandering rock star or something with his "What do we want? *What* do we want?" when he came out at a bloggers convention, making it sound like he would actually consider impeachment and was pushing for it.

Robert Byrd - He's been great too, but he's clearly getting very feeble. It takes him five minutes to spit out a sentence... and what's with all the hand gestures and hand waving while he's talking? It looks too strained and rehearsed, like he's got to convince himself, as well as others, about what he's saying...

Go ahead and flame away... it won't change my mind or my view of this. Term limits would stop a LOT of the corruption... publicly funded campaigns and banning lobbyists would help even more...

[michreject]

14. Yes

Maybe less under the table payoffs.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

15. The jury's out for me right now

I used to be strongly anti-term limits and when they were being pushed heavily back in the early 1990's, I saw them more or less as an undemocratic ploy by Republicans and conservatives to legislate the end of the Democrats' majority in Congress and, in a technical sense, we DO have term limits in the form of regular elections. However, I would argue that very few races seem to be truly competitive because of the massive amounts of money one must raise and spend just to run for elected office. True, there are the occasional upsets where challengers somehow manage to unseat entrenched politicians but more often than not unless the incumbent politician becomes massively unpopular due to a scandal, bad votes, or controversial policies, it seems next to impossible to effectively challenge entrenched politicians for most people. Of course, ceding more power to lobbyists seems like an even worse proposition and, frankly, I personally believe that people should, as a basic democratic principle, be allowed to elect whomever they want to represent them as many times as they want and anything less just doesn't seem compatible with a (still mostly) democratic country. Of course, Presidents and some other executive-branch officeholders ARE term limited, which doesn't always seem quite fair nor democratic but, in light of Presidents like Bush, I'm not sure that I'd want the same people, Republican OR Democratic with that much power running the country for a potentially indefinite period of time. I honestly don't know what the solution is to challenging the seemingly perpetual entrenchment of many of our elected representatives and the fundraising machine but Paul Begala and James Carville discussed some interesting and sensible ideas about election financing in in their 2005 book, "Take It Back".

[WillyT]

16. We Already Have Term Limits

Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
George Bush (41)
Tom Daschle
George Allen
Tom Foley


Just to name a few.

:shrug: