Term limits
Donald Trump is proposing a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of congress. I couldn’t find the specific details for it, but he had apparently endorsed a similar proposal in 2016 where he was pushing for 3 terms for congress (6 years) and 2 terms for senate (12 years).
In general do you support having term limits on the legislative branch? And on the other end of the spectrum, should we have presidential term limits?
Personally I can see arguments for or against. The argument in favor of term limits is that it will help to make sure that certain people don’t become entrenched in our political process. With the lack of term limits, we have people that can dictate our politics for decades. It is argued that this increases insider politics leading to more corruption. Furthermore, we would expect without term limits for our legislative branch to be older, and they might overstay their welcome on both sides. Since incumbency advantage is so powerful, even someone who clearly should retire like Sen Feinstein will stay along for way longer than they should.
The argument against term limits is that by limiting members of congress and senate to a few terms, we are making it so that we will have less experienced politicians that might not know how to get things done. And as people get better at legislating, they might have to either run for a senate seat to keep offering their skills, or run for some other position. Furthermore, in their last term in office they have way more incentive to start looking for their “landing spot” creating a corrupting incentive. Also in the strictest sense of the word, term limits are anti-democratic because they might prevent someone who people wanted to vote for from running again.
Ignoring the practicality of passing a constitutional amendment, would you support the term limits as proposed? Or perhaps different limits?
You are correct imo and one of the few people here who appreciates this point. People within the party also are not as aligned on strategy as most people imagine.
It might be because of no term limits though.
If you introduce them there is more to gain from entrenching a not limited position within the party.
In order to achieve what you ask for you would need term limits to encompass all elected positions.
Otherwise x in the house + x in the Senate then governor or whatever, you still have lifetime politicians.
Something like a 20y cumulative hard cap for all elected positions including all positions that require a nomination and a confirmation by the Senate and the same at the state level.
But that would then be incompatible with the other request that comes from the same circles, IE a ban to work with companies you regulated or legislated upon
4 terms congress and 3 senate terms
its a happy medium sure a lot of people want shorter but I think it makes a lot of sense and easier to push through
at end of day its the people that keep voting the same same same people in house though so we have to be aware of that
trumps first law that made it so you had to wait 1-2 years to get back into the public sector after serving in public was a really really good thing and a good start
I got a slogan for those who oppose term limits: TERM LIMITS LIMIT TERMS
I'm against restriction on who we can vote for. It's up to us not them.
Where the system is dysfunctional it needs fixing. Sticking plasters are not helping.
I almost mentioned those two as the exceptions.
