[Drain The Swamp] Trump's proposal on congressional term limits

The run of the mill Liberal response is no shocker. Their solution to fix Washington corruption is fix gerrymandering. Yes, gerrymandering is an issue, but its largely irrelevant from the term limit debate. Additionally, its life long politiicans are the ones who benefit from gerrymandering.

Career politicians put their interest first. This is the primary reason why we need to put some sort of limits. I don't necessarily advocate putting hard limits. They can run for Congress for 2 or 3 terms, be forced to take a break and they can re-run again after a few years. In the mean time, they can go run for office for their home state.

 

Actually, gerrymandering helps remove the entrenched incumbent. For example, the republican party can rezone a district so that a popular Democrat incumbent can be moved into a district occupied by another popular Democrat incumbent, thus opening up the other district for a new candidate from their own party.

 

I agree that gerrymandering is only part of the problem but term limits isn't much of a solution either. Politicians can be a problem because of a campaign finance system (and lobbying system) that creates incentives for politicians to pursue interests that maximize campaign fundraising revenues (and long term some sort of lobbying career). If you're a politician, your first goal is fundraising because of the sheer cost of elections in the US today. I worked on several campaigns at the federal and state level and fundraising is 75% of a campaign nowadays. Consequently you have to build your campaign and your legislative career around maximizing fundraising dollars. That's your problem right there. Politicians shouldn't spend a majority of their time in fundraisers.

And this behavior goes both ways. Here in Minnesota, the medical device industry is a big part of our economy and federal representatives on both sides of the aisle here basically do whatever the medical device industry wants. Term limits wouldn't fix that problem. New representatives would continue to do the same thing as long as the campaign finance system stays the same. You can see this in states with term limits in state legislatures. Nearby in South Dakota, they also have term limits. Yet despite that, the credit card industry (which basically runs South Dakota) continues to buy off politicians on both sides. Term limits or not, they have the same corruption issues. Hell in South Dakota, they're in the process of repealing an ethics commission that voters recently approved in a referendum. So no, term limits doesn't do anything to solve the underlying concern.

 

Theoretically, this is a good thing - because to stay in office, you need to be responsive to the people that can throw you out. A non-career politician has zero need or interest to answer to voters. They can just focus on whatever benefits them personally once out of office.

 

How many of the new ones elected since 2010 do? Your solution does not solve the problem you're trying to address.

 

Well chances are the more recently elected representatives will have better understanding because people are not going to elect 80 or 90 year old first time congressmen. Like I said, maybe not hard term limits but retirement age.

 

In favor of term limits. More than 300 million people in this country, but a small few have a strangle hold on congress. Once they are in, it's hard to get them out.

 

Americans love simple solutions to complex problems. Common sense is the conservative elixir.

 

I am in favor, 2 terms in Senate is 12 years, 3 terms in house is 6 years, that would be 18 years if you go full max on both.

DD

 

Out of curiousity, who are your 3 or 4 favorite House and Senate members?

 

I am in favor of term limits for Supreme Court Justices. 18 years.

 

Agreed. That's all good stuff. Congressional districts are absurdly large today. Our districts average to be over 700,000 people today. Congressmen and women are supposed to represent a community of people. The state of New Hampshire's lower house has 400 members alone. Talk about local representation. We need an amendment that scales the house (and possibly the senate) with the growth of the country. As population grows, the size of Congress should in order to keep district sizes manageable. This is what Canada does today. Every census not only results in redrawing boundaries but also increasing the number of districts in the country based on growth.

Smaller districts also mean the amount of money required to compete shrinks. It also means tranditional methods of outreach become more important instead of mass media and mail. All of that is a win for the elections process. You also get better legislators when you aren't required to raise millions (or spend millions of your own money) to compete to win. That's a broken process right there.

 

I'm good with that. They serve too long and it bends whole presidential elections. Of course, it would do so regardless just with more certainty.

Otherwise, I'm not particularly interested in term limits for Congress. But then, I also think this endemic corruption problem the Trump voter apparently sees is actually mostly just fine. I can see how it's a compelling idea for someone who thinks government is morbid with corruption.

 

Yup, 18 or 20 years term for SC justices seems right, no one should server until they drop dead, or make a mandatory retirement age of 70-75.

 

The logistics of a several thousand person house may be complex, but assuming that can get worked out, this seems like an all around positive idea to me.

 

Yes, we need term limits.

Representative Maxine Waters forgets where Aleppo is...claims Russia invaded Korea.



Representative Nancy Pelosi can't work with President "Bush"

 

Not knowing where Aleppo is... gee, that sounds so familiar... I wonder why?

Seriously, I suspect if you talked to the district that Maxine Waters represents (or if you are a "libtard", where some tobacco chewing repub represents Podunk, MS), they would provide you with all sorts of things their representative has done for their local community. So you better come up with a better argument for term limits instead of railing against Senators or Congressmen who get re-elected by their constituents.

 

This argument assumes that only these obviously confused people could have done whatever you are referring to and are therefore doing a great job. It belies logic.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

 

If the President can only server 2 term why should the house and senate be any different term limits.