Posted by
tenurecorrupts.com on Thursday, July 13, 2006 5:07:04 PM
A PROPOSAL for a 3 TERM - 1 TERM CONGRESS?
In 1995, the newly victorious Republican majority in the House of
Representatives, intent on displaying their ‘integrity’ on the matter
of meeting their campaign promise to pass Congressional Term Limits,
pulled a cunning, sleazy stunt.
They brought to the floor for ‘debate’, a number of different forms of
term limits bills, so that various House members could each vote ‘FOR’
one or another of the bills, demonstrating that they were fulfilling
their promise to ‘try’ to get term limits passed in the House,
yet certain in the fact that no specific bill would gather a 2/3
majority to pass.
That fraudulent political trick teaches us the need to decide in
advance how a Congressional Term Limit Amendment should be worded
or constructed, and that we must focus on a single version of the bill
to be voted on, to prevent Congress from pulling that stunt the next
time around. That’s what I want to talk about today.
During the past year I have been mulling around a variety of term
liimit formats,and have slowly come ‘round to the thinking that perhaps
the fundamental problem which provokes us to call for Congressional
Term Limits is that the single-minded pursuit by our professional
politicians for reelection success (now at 99%!), makes it very
clear that all their behavior, demonstrated by their TV face time,
their name-recognition efforts, their childish fingerpointing both ways
across the aisle,
makes us wonder if any real legislating is going on.
As a matter of fact, more and more stories are beginning to come out
about Congress not even reading most of the bills they vote on, only
relying on their staffs to tell them which way to vote so that their
reelection is more assured.
In other words, “It’s reelections, stupid!”
If this is so, and I firmly believe that it is, then it appears
that we, the voters, have to consider the virtue of making all
legislative offices single term jobs, or close to it. Under such
circumstances, the incumbent legislator would be substantially free of
any concern for reelection, which frees him from having to cozy up to
various special interests for donations to his reelection campaign
fund. Thus, much more legislation might be determined on its merits for
the country, instead of who is paying for it.
Of course, during his single term he can certainly cultivate special
interest donations to use in his next campaign for some other job, but
it certainly is going to be far more difficult to make bribed promises
for a nebulous ‘next run’.
This would be very close to eliminating politics as a “career’ type of job, a truly worthy goal.
This then brings us to the question of how the House and Senate should be term limited.
For the Senate, which already serves for 6 years per term, a single term appears to be a sufficiently
long enough period to do a sound job, and then to move on. Obviously,
when all Senators are single termers, seniority goes out the window,
merit and principle get a reasonable chance to shine, and better
legislation results. Enough said!
For the House on the other hand, the 2 year constitutional term is
painfully brief. This is the so-called ‘people’s house’, where the
Founders decided to make seats turn over relatively frequently so as to
force representatives to be more in touch with the voters. We might
consider two alternatives: one way could be to lengthen the single term
to make it more worthwhile office to seek; and a second way could be to
allow it to be a 3 term limit, a reasonable compromise.
To lengthen the single term to 3, 4, or 6 years would make the
‘people’s house’ too similar to the Senate, destroying its chief
distinction from the Senate. Therefore, I would opt for the second
alternative of allowing the House to be a reelectable seat for a
maximum 3 terms.
In summary, I suggest that the Congressional Term Limit Amendment be worded as follows:
Members of the Senate shall serve for a maximum of one term of 6 years.
Members of the House shall serve for a term of 2 years, and may be
reelected for a maximum of 3 terms.
Remember, our president is term limited, more and more governors are
term limited, more and more state legislatures are term limited, as are
a great many city councils and mayors.
WHY NOT CONGRESS?!!!
Nelson Lee Walker
http://tenurecorrupts.com