Tag: term limits

Don’t Rely on the Altruism of Baby Boomers

Post author By David
Post date February 2, 2010
2 Comments on Don’t Rely on the Altruism of Baby Boomers

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David Brooks must have thought yesterday was April Fools Day – that or he thinks he’s getting old so he decided to pen a column painting a rosy picture for seniors by coming to a senile conclusion. In The Geezers’ Crusade he comes to this wildly impossible conclusion:

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

Tags change congress, health care, KVNU FTP, money, New York Times, Obama, technology, term limits

State

Bob Lonsberry Contradicts Himself on Term Limits

Post author By David
Post date January 8, 2010
8 Comments on Bob Lonsberry Contradicts Himself on Term Limits

It’s not really fair to expect everyone to have an up or down opinion on a candidate within a week of their campaign being announced. For that reason there should be nothing surprising about the fact that Bob Lonsberry is not sold on Mike Lee (yet). As he aired his minor reservations with our latest 2010 Senate candidate he got talking about term limits – because Mike Lee thinks we should have a term limits amendment (perhaps like this one) – and Bob’s position completely failed to add up. At first I was planning to just comment on Bob’s site, but I felt that this deserved a full post.

There is a disconnect between Bob’s position on term limits and what he says later in his article. Here’s what he thinks of term limits:

Yes, people serve way too long in Congress. Yes, we have a professional political class right now. But the insinuation that the era of the Founders was much different doesn’t stand up to the test of history. Several of the Founders themselves held elected office for years on end. Some for the majority of their lives, and our Republic was benefited by their service.

And any person with Mike Lee’s knowledge of the Constitution must understand that an amendment mandating term limits would go against both the letter and the spirit of what the Founders wanted. Term limits don’t limit the freedom of politicians, they limit the freedom of the voters. We don’t need term limits, we have elections. And if Mike Lee, or someone else, can pose a viable alternative to Bob Bennett, and convince voters of that fact, the Constitution’s existing system for replacing politicians will work perfectly.

Later he makes this statement which exposes the weakness of his position:

I’m also bothered by Mike Lee’s age. Not that a 38-year-old can’t serve well in the Senate, but that he’s got so much life left. True, he is saying that people shouldn’t make a career of Washington, but so too did the two current Utah senators, both of whom have since made a career of Washington. Everybody running against incumbents is against long tenure in office. And everybody running for re-election believes in experience and seniority.

My concern is that at 38, Utah could be biting off something it will take 30 or 40 years to chew. I’m nervous about that.

The one selling point for 76-year-old Bob Bennett is that, at his age, he’s got a built-in term limit. He’s also, as they say, the devil you know. (emphasis added)

In case you missed the disconnect, Bob says that the founders already established a way to limit terms through regular elections and then worries that we might be stuck with Mike Lee for 40 years because he’s relatively young.

Here’s the half-truth that opens up the heart of the problem:

Term limits don’t limit the freedom of politicians, they limit the freedom of the voters. We don’t need term limits, we have elections.

It’s true that term limits limit the freedom of voters by eliminating the option to elect a president they like to a third term (to use our existing term limit as an example) – that’s the only freedom of the voters that is being limited. The problem is that the freedom of voters is already severely limited by our lack of term limits because of our political environment where potential candidates often choose not to challenge an incumbent, especially within their own party. For proof of that just look at how many more candidates tend to run for open seats. With term limits we would lose the option to vote for an incumbent after a set time, but we would gain so many candidates who currently choose not to run against an incumbent.

Bob claims that the founders did not want term limits and he’s probably right (although I doubt they ever addressed the issue to prove that conclusively) but they didn’t want parties either (they did make that clear) and we have parties anyway. The party system without term limits makes the regular election cycle a very weak way to limit terms – especially in a place where one party is dominant. Bob says that if someone can pose a viable alternative to an incumbent and convince voters of that fact then the system works perfectly. The question is, how can that happen when the potential candidates remove themselves from consideration because of the system that tilts heavily in favor of incumbents? And what makes a viable candidate? If a viable candidate is one that has the capacity and interest necessary to tackle the issues and do the job of a senator then I am a viable candidate. If a viable candidate is one that voters are likely to believe in that I am nowhere near viable. The first one should be the criteria, and if it were we would have lots of viable candidates for any office.

In a nation that probably has 80 out of 100 senate seats safely in the hands of one party or another and only about 20 seats that actually have a reasonable chance of changing hands from one election to the next the method of limiting terms that the Founders established is virtually impotent. The era of the founders may not have been much different than our era but it was different in some important ways. In this environment the Founders might find term limits to be a very reasonable method to ensure that the voters had the maximum amount of choice in candidates.

Tags 2010, candidates, connections, media, Mike Lee, senate, term limits

General

Term Limits in a Nutshell

I read what must be the most succinct summary of the term limit debate over at Utah Policy. LaVarr Webb said:

I am a big fan of congressional term limits if they are applied across the board. It would be foolish, however, for Utah to unilaterally impose term limits.

As long as power in Congress is amassed in its most senior members, Utah needs to play that game or be badly disadvantaged.

But term limits for all makes sense.

The response from trgrant:

I don’t agree in a legislated term limit. There are people you will want to keep in office for longer than a certain term.

I would respond to trgrant by asking a question inspired by someone who had previously opposed term limits. How many hundreds of incumbent get reelected after “a certain term” despite widespread dissatisfaction with their service – now compare that to the number of people who you would really want to keep in after that time. I would bet the benefits of term limits in terms of removing entrenched and undesirable incumbents would outweigh the loss of established and desirable incumbents by at least 100 to 1. Besides that, of those who you wish to keep in, how much of the reason for keeping them is based mainly on seniority rather than irreplaceability?

To LaVarr Webb I would ask – if Congressional term limits are good, why not set the example by imposing term limits at the state legislature so that voters can begin to see the benefit locally and have more inclination to implement it federally.

Tags connections, KVNU FTP, term limits, Utah Policy

culture National State

Term Limits for All

One year ago today I pointed out that the subject of term limits becomes popular after an election. Like clockwork it came up again this year. Jim DeMint jumped the gun a bit by announcing three weeks ago that he would introduce a term limit amendment. Yesterday he introduced the bill and today I read an opinion by Mark Tapscott on why he thinks it will actually happen this time.

In previous posts on the subject we have usually had some good discussions, but they tend to be the same from year to year. I’ll summarize the previous discussions in hopes that we can start a step or two down the road and have a more advanced discussion by doing so.

The discussion that we usually have boils down to the fact that term limits deal more with a symptom of our broken system rather than a cause but that treating that symptom might help to promote the curing of some of the underlying causes. Those who oppose term limits often argue that the people should be free to keep their same representatives as long as they want – but that thinking seems to obscure the fact that the position should always be greater than the person holding it and that society and the political system benefits from regular turnover so that we can’t mistakenly think that the junior senate seat from Utah somehow belongs to Bob Bennett, or that the senior senate seat from Massachusetts was some inalienable right for Ted Kennedy until his death.

Tags amendments, civic participation, connections, Jim DeMint, term limits

culture National State

Senator Jim DeMint on Term Limits

Post author By David
Post date October 23, 2009
7 Comments on Senator Jim DeMint on Term Limits

I started a discussion on term limits a couple of years ago on this site and between what I said then and what I have said on other sites I think my position on term limits is fairly clear – I believe that term limits generally produce benefits that far outweigh the drawbacks that opponents will cite. I think solid evidence of that is that not one state (out of 15) that has enacted a term limit law and had it start limiting terms has ever repealed their term limit law. (Six states did enact laws and then repeal them before they took effect – including Utah.) Coming from that position, I was happy to hear the announcement from Senator Jim DeMint that he plans to introduce a term limits amendment soon.

While I have some questions about some of the specifics of what he plans to propose like how he decided that three terms would be the appropriate limit for members of the House or how flexible he would be on the particular limits he is proposing, I found one statement that he made very insightful about the last time that term limits were seriously pursued by the political class.

Fifteen years ago, Republicans – who had been out of power in Congress for forty years – made term limits a centerpiece of their “Contract with America” agenda.

The term limits constitutional amendment ultimately failed, in part because so many new reform-minded congressmen imposed term limits on themselves. After six or eight years, these members voluntarily went home, leaving behind those Republicans and Democrats who fully intended to make a career inside the beltway.

The fact is, party doesn’t matter when it comes to reform. If you want to change the policies, you have to change the process.

He’s absolutely right that no significant reform will come in how Washington operates until we make structural changes that force it to operate differently. His comment that many of those who wanted to enact term limits voluntarily term-limited themselves – thus crippling the attempt by leaving it in the hands of those who had no interested in being term limited was insightful. I realized that anyone who wants to make such a change would have to take the attitude and make a pledge to stay in Washington as long as possible until they either got term limits enacted or else until they no longer believed that term limits were worth pursuing. Those who will impose their own limits independent of everybody else will limit their own comparative effectiveness by granting more power to those who do not believe in their ideals (specifically the ideal of having term limits).

Tags amendments, campaign promises, change congress, Constitution, ideals, issues, Jim DeMint, term limits, Utah

culture National

Constitutional Amendment 22

Post author By David
Post date August 20, 2009
4 Comments on Constitutional Amendment 22

Off and on in various circles the idea of mandating term limits for various elected officials is discussed with varying degrees of interest. I wonder if many of these discussions would exist in the absence of the 22nd Amendment.

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

The two sides of the debate can be generally summarized as “we need fresh ideas/faces in Congress, incumbents have too much advantage in elections, the office is more important than the person holding it” and “the people should be free to decide when to replace their elected officials without being tied to an artificial limit, these jobs benefit from experience, constant turnover favors special interests.”

In my view each side has some valid concerns. Conveniently the 22nd amendment seems to feel non-restrictive of the peoples ability to choose because only one president ever served more than two terms in 160 years under the Constitution before it was adopted and as far as I know only one president since has made any vocal portion of the voters wish to not be limited to two terms.

I have not yet decided for sure whether an artificial limit placed on a really good elected leader would be less burdensome than the common practice of perpetual incumbency – I suspect that it would. What i know is that I would like to see a lot more turnover among elected officials so that people are reminded that whoever they elect is replaceable – ideally that would happen without having to impose artificial limits as it has for our presidency for the majority of our nations history.

Tags amendments, Constitution, documents, history, term limits

General National

Federalist Nos. 71 – 72

In three sentences Federalist No. 71 conveys the primary reason to prefer a republic over a democracy:

It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it. (emphasis original)

By separating the people from direct decision-making a republic insulates the nation from mob rule.

I found great irony in the following truth:

The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter; as if the exercise of its rights, by either the executive or judiciary, were a breach of their privilege and an outrage to their dignity.

Sometimes today it seems that the representatives of the people in our "popular" assembly have fancied that they are the people themselves and they often appear impatient or disgusted at opposition from the voters when they are busy trying to promote the will of the President.

In talking about the duration in office of the president (Federalist No. 72), Hamilton comes out in staunch opposition to term limits:

Nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill-founded upon close inspection, than a scheme which in relation to the present point has had some respectable advocates, I mean that of continuing the chief magistrate in office for a certain time, and then excluding him from it.

As in various other decisions in the original Constitution we have changed our stance on that since that time. Unlike other such examples I believe that this change has been positive or at least neutral for the nation. In fact I have been one to favor the possibility of adding term limitations to other elected positions. There is one way in which I could see someone arguing that term limits may have contributed to our imperial presidency:

An avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office, looking forward to a time when he must at all events yield up the emoluments he enjoyed, would feel a propensity, not easy to be resisted by such a man, to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory;

I’d love to hear other perspectives on whether our two term limit on the presidency has been a good or bad thing for the country now that we have had half a century to see the results.

Tags documents, federalist, history, questions, term limits

National State

Post-Election Subjects

There must be something about the conclusion of an election that brings up the subject of term limits. I wrote about it a couple of times a year ago and have said nothing about it since then. Now the Standard Examiner has an article saying that It’s time to reignite the debate over term limits. The article talks about previous efforts to enact term limits in the late 90’s. In the comments section for the article Tired Old Argument says:

Term limits basically says, we don’t trust the voters to make a good, informed decision.

What Tired Old Argument forgets is that in a republic, such as the one we live in, the very structure of government says that we should not trust the voters to be able to be adequately informed for most major decisions – that’s why they are supposed to delegate the task to their best and brightest (which is who they would elect in theory). It turns out that our history suggests that knowing when to replace their elected representatives is among the things that voters are not very adept at doing.

This years numbers are instructive on this point. Congress has been mired with approval ratings hovering near 10% for most of the last year. Logically this would suggest that we would have a high rate of turnover when elections come amidst such an approval rating. In fact, approximately 90% of our elected officials are returning to Washington (this is not counting those who are returning as lobbyists or in appointed positions). What is even more telling is that of the 6 of the 10% who are not returning to elected office retired voluntarily. When 90% disapproval results in 95% retention that suggests that the voters are not very adept at replacing their elected officials.

As Reach Upward so astutely articulated in last year’s discussion:

. . . it may be good to toss even great statesmen because the office is more important than any person that may hold it.

(I will be quick to point out that Reach had no committed position on the issue of term limits at that time.) I would love to hear from anyone on where they stand on the issue after our elections this year.

Tags 2008, government, term limits

State

Utah Legislative Tenure

First I would like to thank Steve Urquhart for his comments. And in case anyone got the wrong impression, I had no intention to spar with Steve over this issue or single him out. I respect Rep. Urquhart for his openness on this and many other issues. He has convincingly demonstrated his honest belief that “sunlight [is] the best disinfectant.” The major reason that I singled him out is that I know that he is one member of the legislature that understands the value of blogging discussions.

All that being said, this post is mainly some of my further findings after his comments to my previous post. He said that term limits came in a wave in 1994, but it would be more accurate to say that 1994 was the tail end of the wave. 15 states enacted term limits before 1994, 3 more (including Utah) did so in 1994, and 3 have enacted term limits since 1994. Of the 6 states that have repealed their term limit laws (that’s 28% of states that had such laws), it appears that none of those laws ever lasted long enough to limit the term of any legislator. No state where term limits actually started limiting terms has gone back. My assessment would be that Utah retreated from that legislation prematurely.

The second part of Steve’s response was quite enlightening:

Of course, I realize that people can, and will, argue that we just want to hold the offices for life. That’s their right, and for some legislators it might be true. But people should consider the average lifespan of a legislator. In the House (largely through self-selection), it is right around 4 years. (I heard that number and have never independently verified it; but, it seems accurate. I’ve been there 7 years, and there aren’t many Reps who’ve been there longer than I have).

Since he had not verified the 4 year average I went to the website for the Utah Legislature (a very good site, by the way) and did some quick checking on the 75 members of the house and all 29 senators. In the Senate the mean term length is 7 years with an average of 6.93 so by the time we next have elections the average term will be sitting at 8 years (the longest current term being 18). 14 of the 29 have served between 3 and 7 years, most of the other 15 have served more than 7 years.

In the House, where Steve serves, the mean length of current consecutive service is 5 years with an average of about 5.2 so the average will be 6 years before we next vote. The are a number of representatives who have served 3 years or less consecutively who have previously served in the House, sometimes for more than a decade. If we factor in lifetime service for these representatives the average goes up to nearly 5.5 years. About 70% of the members of the house have served no longer than Steve, although there are many who have served 7 years like he has.

It is comforting to see that we have a pretty good rate of turnover in our state and I hope that it stays that way. So long as we have consistent turnover I think we need to focus more on correcting the imbalance of power between the major parties – as Obi wan had suggested – at least here in Utah.

Tags issues, numbers, term limits

State

Term Limits

I asked what people were interested in and the interest seemed to be term limits. I decided to do some initial research and found a good resource on term limits. The states that currently have term limits are:

ARIZONA
ARKANSAS
CALIFORNIA
COLORADO
FLORIDA
LOUISIANA
MAINE
MICHIGAN
MISSOURI
MONTANA
NEBRASKA
NEVADA
OHIO
OKLAHOMA
SOUTH DAKOTA

In addition I was surprised to find that Utah was on a short list of states where term limits had been enacted and later repealed.

IDAHO
MASSACHUSETTS
OREGON
UTAH
WASHINGTON
WYOMING

A little more digging and I learned that Utah enacted term limits by statute in 1994 (just before I was paying close attention to politics) and repealed them in 2003 before they ever affected any legislators (the limit was 12 years and the statute only lasted for 9). So now we know that our Utah legislature is not anxious to limit themselves.

Now I would love to hear from anyone who has experience in the states with term limits. Jason has voiced his unqualified support of the limits in his state. Does anyone else want to share? Are there any opinions on lifetime bans versus limits of consecutive years of service? I am not ready to choose sides on that yet.

I would also be interested to know more about the decision to end limits before they began in Utah. Perhaps Steve Urqhart might have some insights there that he would share (hint – information from 2003, or hints on where to get some would be nice because my short search led to a bunch of dead links).

Tags connections, issues, questions, term limits