To Limit or Not To Limit

Term Limits for Representatives and Senators. With all the low-hanging corrupt political fruit to grab and chew to pieces, some will wonder why I am choosing to bring up "term limits". The answer is simple. We all agree that American politics are corrupt. Both in terms of process and personnel. The process is a result of the personnel though. As some like to say, we need to deal with the disease, not the symptons.

First, I do not want to imply that every elected official becomes corrupt. A very minute amount do not. This post is not about that immeasurably small minority though. It is about the majority of our elected officials, who do become corrupt; which is our biggest opportunity to bring real change and reform to our government. Think about it for a second. Since 1968, the House has a re-election rate of NINETY-FIVE PERCENT!! The Senate has almost 85%!! The government, those very elected officials, are the ones responsible for transforming the country into what it is today. We the people are ultimately responsible for their actions. We allowed this corruption by allowing the SAME elected officials to run the country year after year.

So what are the pro's and con's of term limits?

Some pro's:
- favors "meritocracy" by downgrading "seniority"
- reduces the power and influence of the lobbies and bureaucracy
- it will help in the fight against wasteful spending by removing powerful politicians that get in bed with pet projects that turn into out of control "keep me getting re-elected" projects
- it will encourage fresh ideas and current representation
- encourages more voter participation because it won't be the same old names on the ballot every year
- encourages voters to vote on principle instead of popularity
- gets real Americans running this country, instead of "politicians"
- will reduce corruption by making it difficult for alliances to bully junior politicians

Some con's:
- gets rid of the few good elected officials that we have
- encourages corruption to be passed on by having corrupt outgoing politicians endorse their replacement
- loss of knowledge and experience in our representatives
- exposure to electing the "latest trend"

There are more of each, but I really am struggling to come up with con's. Please give me your input on both.

I am in favor of term limits because the good outweighs the bad here. In regards to the concern of "we lose good elected officals", let me say this. If they truly are good at what they do, they will have a proven track record to show us, right? If they truly care about us, they will back a candidate that will continue on their principles. Ideally, that candidate would have some track record of their own that supports that they are closely aligned to the outgoing official. Make sense? Of course there is room for corruption in this - as there is with ANYTHING in a free country. This gives us a real opportunity to scrutinize them though - instead of just voting on their name recognition.

One of the biggest problems with no term limits is the "seniority" problem in our system. If you don't know how it works, here it is in a nutshell. The longer you have been in position, the more "senior" you are. The senior officals get "first call" when committees are formed. Every major law that is passed is brought to Congress by the committee that is appointed to draft the "Bill". So, mediocre officials, that are senior based only on tenure not ability, are the ones that head up every major Bill that goes in front of Congress for a vote. Talk about exposing ourselves to deep, deep corruption.

I could spend several BLOG entries on "Seniority vs. Merit". Man I get fired up over that process. But again, term limits would not allow the same people to be in charge of these committees for years and even DECADES on end!! This alone should be enough to sway any nay-sayers.

Secondly, I would argue that having new names on the ballots more often would encourage, if not force, voters to better research the candidates before voting for them just because they recognize their name. This in itself would expose corruption and encourage more Americans to vote and even run for office.

Voting ballots are part of the problem as well though. Let's face it, most Americans check the box of the party they most closely associate themselves with. That tends to get the same people elected again and again since the people voting each year are usually the same people that voted the last time. Remove the candidate's party affiliation from the ballot.

Campaign reform is a must whether we inact term limits or not. Too much to go into here, but the laws around campaigning are no less corrupt than the politicians taking advantage of voters. The guy with the most money (legal or otherwise) and most recognizable name wins.

Another factor that ties directly into this is immigration reform. President Bush used "amnesty for illegals" as a political tool to buy votes. It worked. President Obama is trying to use that exact same trick himself right now. Any law that is so obviously used to buy votes should be considered unconstitutional at worst and treasonous at best - I say treasonous because making ILLEGALS (that is CRIMINALS) equal citizens to you and I is unforgiveable. This is corruption in plain view, yet we do nothing about it.

Combine these things and you have reform that the people will actually benefit from. This is a deep conversation and I have only scratched the surface. I will close with one of the things I opened with: we have got to focus on the disease, NOT the symptons!!

the Patriot