Saturday, January 19, 2013

The People Want Term Limits in Congress but the Supreme Court Stands in the Way

A Gallup poll released earlier today shows that 75% of Americans would vote for term limits for those in Congress and the Senate. Republicans lead the charge with 82%, where Democrats were on the low end with only 65% of them saying they'd vote for such a law. Independents, like they are on most issues, were in-between with 79% of them approving of the idea. When it comes down by age it was pretty evenly spread with not a single segment of the population being farther than 3% away from the mean.

Interestingly enough in the 2012 elections the country saw a 91% re-election rate (incumbents keeping there seat) in both the House and the Senate. While Congress may only have an approval rating of only 15.3 % (RCP) most people feel like their congressional representative isn't the problem. With this being the case, term limits would be an easy fix for this problem, but there are other obstacles that are in the way.

In 1995 the Supreme Court heard a case in which term limits on congress were in question. U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton the party U.S. Term Limits lost and the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of the U.S. Congress stricter than those specified in the Constitution. At the time the ruling overturned laws in 23 states that allowed term limits and creating the current situation we have now. What this means is that a constitutional amendment would be needed in order to get the term limits that 3/4ths of Americans want.

Still, not everyone thinks term limits would be great, some think that term limits would cause for elected officials to be more partisan (like a President in a lame duck session) or that backroom deals with lobbyists would become rampant. A politician with term limits is a politician who is soon to be out of work, just how often would we see an elected official hit their term limit and the next day be making millions as a lobbyist.

There is definitely a problem with our current congress, bills and ideas that have 60%+ approval by the public don't pass and the approval rating of our high office is embarrassingly low. Alas, there seems to be no easy fix like term limits, but some kind of fix needs to found soon.

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