Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), official photo from Senate website.
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) today announced his latest legislative introduction: a Congressional Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution to limit the maximum terms of service of Senators and Representatives.
Senator DeMint has three other Senators co-sponsoring his proposed amendment: Tom Coburn (R-OK), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), and Sam Brownback (R-KS).
Senator DeMint is making this proposal in order to remove from Washington the class of "permanent politicians" that represent their constituents only in name, and have every incentive to self-identify as permanent residents of Washington, DC, and not as permanent residents of their respective States or districts. He has a point. A Representative might possibly be forced out of office because his State lost a district in the Census, and he winds up being the one told to sacrifice his seat. That, of course, cannot happen to a Senator. Either type of member of Congress might be removed from office for misconduct. Rarely, he gets voted out--and Senator DeMint points out that 90% of all incumbents who seek re-election, win re-election.
Tom Coburn offers greater detail on why incumbents win re-election 90% of the time:
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.
Senator Coburn also points out that with redistricting (except for the unlucky Representative who gets drawn out of the House if his State loses one or more seats), a Representative, having good connections with his State legislature, can "choose his voters."
The effect of this amendment would be very simple. Senators would be limited to two terms or fifteen years, and Representatives would be limited to three terms or seven years. The President of the United States is, of course, limited to two terms or ten years. And just as Presidential term limits did not constrain the then-sitting President (Harry S. Truman, who declined to run anyway), this new proposed amendment would start to count every Senate or House election after it takes effect.
Congress proposed the eventually-ratified Amendment 22, limiting the service of Presidents, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt shocked everybody (in both parties) by running for a third term, and then a fourth. (He thus became the seventh President to leave the White House feet first.) The prevailing opinion at the time was that a President who could succeed himself again and again would not be too different from a king--or perhaps a Dictator Perpetuus, the office that Julius Caesar held before he was assassinated. But what everybody forgot was that the Senate of Rome was once called "an assemblage of kings," as the late Will Durant reminded everyone in his book, The Story of Civilization: Caesar and Christ. If Congress has now become an assemblage of kings (the Senate) and an assemblage of dukes (the House), then it's past time that their terms of service were limited.
Add to it that if Senators and congressmen knew that they would have to live under the very laws that they made, they'd be more inclined to repeal laws than to pass new ones.
Comments
I think that term limits have a rationale, but if one thinks that 7 years for the house is intelligent, please think again. It it way too short a time to even know where the bathroom is! I would suggest a minimum of 18 years for the House and the Senate. Being elected in their late 40's most would reach retirement age if they were re-elected Speaking of Constitutional amendments, I would make further adjustments. The House seat should be lengthened to 3 years, and half the Senate should be up every 3 years, not one-third up every 2 year cycle. This would eliminate a great many elections and make the 3 year cycle much more important. I would limit the president to one six year term. If he wasn't liked after three years he/she could lose the House and maybe could lose half the Senate. He/she'd be a lame duck! In the 2nd term he is a lame duck after 6 years anyway.
Richard J. Garfunkel
Host of the Advocates
WVOX Radio 1460
www.wvox.com
By the way isn't it funny that the GOP, now in the minority, wants mostly Democrats "term limited." By the way, I was in Hilton Head during Jim DeMint's first campaign for the US Senate. He ran against a very qualified woman who was a state education person, me thinks. Boy, was she more qualified than DeMint. I was amazed she lost. His campaign rhetoric was frightening and I thought a joke. I under-estimated the will and the intelligence of the South Carolinian voter. For my two cents He has been a horror and an unmitigated disaster. But just see what type of governor the state has. Strange! In the good old days Governor Sandord would have been lynched by the same yahoos who hauled out Leo Frank down the road in Georgia. But the state isn't all crazy because the senior Senator seems to have a brain and pedigree.
Richard J. Garfunkel
Mr. Garfunkel: First, your characterizatio of your State's Governor and junior Senator illustrate everything that everyone says is wrong about American politics--except that it's always the other guy who suggests that someone ought to be removed from office by an act of murder.
Even laying that aside, you are mistaken. Jim DeMint wants *everyone* to be subject to term limits. It's just that he sees no reason to leave the Senate and sacrifice seniority when he knows that the kitten who tries to follow him will go up against the wildcat and lose.
And finding the restrooms? How would you know? Who told you that? You didn't find that out from personal experience--your name doesn't come up in a search of senate.gov or house.gov.
In any event, your proposed substitute term limits are almost status quo, and would change nothing.
2 terms in the senate is 12 years, and 3 years in the house is 6 years.....dumbass....
By the way, I'm politically a LIBERAL LIBERAL lefty, I support abortion rights, gay rights/marriage, marijuana legalization, universal healthcare, higher taxes, etc.etc.
BUT IM ABSOLUTELY for this! :)
Go crazy southern senators! End the oligarchical reign of Robert Byrds, and the Ted Stevenses of the senate.
I see now that my description of the DeMint-Coburn amendment requires clarification.
When I said "two terms or fifteen years" for a Senator, I meant simply this: Jim DeMint's proposed amendment would count a Senator's term against the allowed limit if he served for more than three years of a term to which someone else had been elected to the Senate originally. Similarly, he would count a Representative's term against the limit if he had served for more than one year of someone else's original term.
Thus if someone were elected to the Senate in a special election, to fill out someone's unexpired term, and if he served for, say, four years, then he would be allowed only one more election to the Senate and then would be forced to retire.
I appreciate anyone, regardless of his wishes and desires for what laws ought to be passed, who supports term limits, as I'm sure Senator DeMint would as well.
I personally prefer 10 years for House members and 12 for the Senate, which is more in line with the 8 for the President (yes, I know there are provisions that can extend it further if the VP ascends to the Presidency, but those are rare). The idea that the job is too complicated to learn quickly is laughable if you've ever met most of these people, and perhaps we're better off if they don't learn to get *too* complex -- the more intricate, long, and complicated the legislation, the more likely it holds giveaways for special interests and loopholes for those who can afford the accountants to find them.
These guys get into office and build little empires for themselves on favors for special interests that are paid for by taxpayers. Then they rig the game so they stay in power. It's time for that to stop.
@Dave: I have to agree with Senator DeMint on 6 (or at the most 7) years for a member of the House. That's three elections anyway. Time to give someone else a chance.
You're right about maybe not letting them stay in there long enough to get too complex. I remember this quote: "These bills have been put together by some of the best legal minds in the country. I don't understand half of them myself, and I used to be a lawyer." The source, of course, is Claude Rains, as Sen. Joseph Paine (D-CO), in *Mister Smith Goes to Washington*.
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