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Term limits for Congress movement

foophil

Graduate Poster
foophil
Joined
Nov 1, 2013
Messages
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Location
Gainesville, FL
Has anyone been following the latest attempt to have term limits enacted for Congress? The webpage is pretty shoddy at this time, but the Facebook page has some more well though out information.

http://www.termlimitsforuscongress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TermLimits...sibly-want-to-know-about-our-/740304855991599

I'm not sure how I feel about this. At first I was very much for it, but I heard a good argument against it that has me thinking. Namely that higher turnover in positions that are difficult to train for (writing laws for the country) isn't necessarily a good thing. I figured if the President can be switched out every 8 years, so could anyone in Congress, but I'm not sure that is a good comparison.

Obviously, directly tackling finance reforms and potentially anonymous unlimited donations would be better, but since that isn't happening (yet?), is this a good route to go? Would this even impact lobbying in the end like the backers of this hope?
 
I might be able to agree to it if we can cap the income for former elected officials and their staffers- say a 95% marginal tax over $250,000 for at least 10 years after they leave office. Otherwise there's too strong an incentive for the revolving door of lobbyists, who will end up with the real political power.
 
Since god wrote the constitution (according to Tom Delay) and god didn't put in anything about term limits, then term limits would be blasphemy.
 
foophil said:
I'm not sure how I feel about this. At first I was very much for it, but I heard a good argument against it that has me thinking. Namely that higher turnover in positions that are difficult to train for (writing laws for the country) isn't necessarily a good thing. I figured if the President can be switched out every 8 years, so could anyone in Congress, but I'm not sure that is a good comparison.

Obviously, directly tackling finance reforms and potentially anonymous unlimited donations would be better, but since that isn't happening (yet?), is this a good route to go? Would this even impact lobbying in the end like the backers of this hope?
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It's a bad idea. We have legislative term limits in Missouri and all that it accomplished was giving lobbyists and aides more experience than the elected representatives, so the lobbyists and aides end up writing the bills.

Bad, bad idea.
 
Upchurch said:
It's a bad idea. We have legislative term limits in Missouri and all that it accomplished was giving lobbyists and aides more experience than the elected representatives, so the lobbyists and aides end up writing the bills.

Bad, bad idea.
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This was exactly what I was going to say. Being a member of Congress shouldn't be 'lobbyist in training', and I'd be against anything that makes that more so than it already is. Some mechanism needs to address some of the current issues with lobbyist (which I don't think are inherently bad) before term limits could be considered.

I like the idea of enforced telecommuting for Congress, so they have to spend most of their time in their state. That has it's own issues though, as it might be easier to get away with shady deals and the like locally than it is in DC, but at least it makes the lobbyist have to go around to them. Then again, maybe that just means only the wealthy lobbies getting access to them and cutting out the little guys.

It's complicated.
 
I think this whole term limits meme was thought up by the lobbyist who know that as anewbie you dont know the ropes and your much easier to manipulate.

What we really need is more professional politicians WITH financial regulations to make it fair playing field for new comers.

Think about - in any other field of life no one would EVER say oh go to the new guy.

Heart surgery. You want the new guy or the guy whose done 5000 of them.
The car mechanic. You want the guy working out of his trunk or the guy who has a full shop.

Only in politics have the people who are for term limits got bamboozled into the meme that the new totally inn experienced guy is a better choice over the seasoned experienced one
 
Upchurch said:
It's a bad idea. We have legislative term limits in Missouri and all that it accomplished was giving lobbyists and aides more experience than the elected representatives, so the lobbyists and aides end up writing the bills.

Bad, bad idea.
Click to expand...

This does indeed sound bad. Can you provide some examples?
 
Magyar said:
I think this whole term limits meme was thought up by the lobbyist who know that as anewbie you dont know the ropes and your much easier to manipulate.

What we really need is more professional politicians WITH financial regulations to make it fair playing field for new comers.

Think about - in any other field of life no one would EVER say oh go to the new guy.

Heart surgery. You want the new guy or the guy whose done 5000 of them.
The car mechanic. You want the guy working out of his trunk or the guy who has a full shop.

Only in politics have the people who are for term limits got bamboozled into the meme that the new totally inn experienced guy is a better choice over the seasoned experienced one
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Yeah, I'm starting to think I was one of those with the wool pulled over my eyes. It sounded right to me when I thought about those 'evil politicians' sitting there for decades being bought off by lobbyists. But now I'm not seeing how this would make anything better.
 
foophil said:
This does indeed sound bad. Can you provide some examples?
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No. I'll admit that my opinion was formed from anecdotes and opinions of people more politically involved at the state level than I am. People that I trust, but you'd have no reason to.
 
ravdin said:
I might be able to agree to it if we can cap the income for former elected officials and their staffers- say a 95% marginal tax over $250,000 for at least 10 years after they leave office. Otherwise there's too strong an incentive for the revolving door of lobbyists, who will end up with the real political power.
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"End up"?

What we really need is a bounty on lobbyists.
 
There's a TV ad showing here telling us to fight back against the lobbyists and special interests keeping the pipeline from being built.

The ad is paid for by special interest lobbyists.
 
DavidJames said:
There's a TV ad showing here telling us to fight back against the lobbyists and special interests keeping the pipeline from being built.

The ad is paid for by special interest lobbyists.
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I appreciate the irony, but I don't actually see a problem. Obviously you'll want to side with whatever special interest group aligns most closely with your own interests. If you think the pipeline is a bad idea, then naturally you'll fight back against the lobbyists and special interests that are trying to get the pipeline built. Hopefully you won't lose much sleep over the realization that you're fighting for the special interests that are trying to stop it.
 
Elections are term limits, at the voters' choice, per representative. That's a pretty good set-up.
 
hgc said:
Elections are term limits, at the voters' choice, per representative. That's a pretty good set-up.
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For the past five decades or more, an incumbent Representative who runs for re-election has had a 98 percent chance of winning. An incumbent Senator has had an over 80 percent chance.

Sounds like a pretty good setup, all right. For incumbents.
 
G6000 said:
For the past five decades or more, an incumbent Representative who runs for re-election has had a 98 percent chance of winning. An incumbent Senator has had an over 80 percent chance.

Sounds like a pretty good setup, all right. For incumbents.
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Looks to me like voters aren't very interested in term limits.

Now, I'll grant you that gerrymandering districts means that more of them are non-competitive, leading to that 98% figure. But that's not a problem that's addressed by term limits. It's addressed by states choosing better ways to draw Congressional districts. I think that the 80% reelection rate for Senators is quite reasonable.
 
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hgc said:
Looks to me like voters aren't very interested in term limits.

Now, I'll grant you that gerrymandering districts means that more of them are non-competitive, leading to that 98% figure. But that's not a problem that's addressed by term limits. It's addressed by states choosing better ways to draw Congressional districts. I think that the 80% reelection rate for Senators is quite reasonable.
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The problem is that the term limit proponents seem to think that change for change's sake is good enough. While I don't entirely disagree with that sentiment (I'd be very happy if we could push a reset button on the US Congress and start from scratch), I think term limits are used as a substitute for involvement - "I'd rather not get too involved in the process and instead would prefer that representatives were kicked out automatically at some point."

Codifying political laziness probably isn't the best answer to whatever problems one sees in the system.
 
hgc said:
Looks to me like voters aren't very interested in term limits.

Now, I'll grant you that gerrymandering districts means that more of them are non-competitive, leading to that 98% figure. But that's not a problem that's addressed by term limits. It's addressed by states choosing better ways to draw Congressional districts. I think that the 80% reelection rate for Senators is quite reasonable.
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Voters are interested in term limits, just not for the guy they send to Congress. They want terms limits for all those other guys.
 
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