The first agenda for the New Congress - Term Limits

As the election season winds down we need to ask ourselves, what is it that we want from this new Congress?   What kind of change would strongly impact America and improve the legislative process?  Term limits for Congress should be the first and most obvious choice and one that has the best chance of succeeding.   Term limits will break the all powerful incumbency, will deter and discourage special interests, lobbyists and corporations from spending too much money on campaigns and will constantly rejuvenate Congress with fresh ideas.  We will achieve the goal of the founding fathers in sending citizen legislators to office instead of career politicians.

Term limits also has the the best chance of passing in this highly partisan and tense environment.

The official organization for promoting U.S. Term Limits cites the following statistic.

A recent poll shows that 78 percent of Americans support term limits for the U.S. Congress, including large majorities for Democrats (74%), independents (74%) and Republicans (84%). Meanwhile, congressional approval ratings have dived to all-time lows.

This kind of consensus among Americans is hard to find.  This of course is easy to understand because term limits embodies and exemplifies the American representative form of government.  How can we truly achieve representation when the power of incumbency, money, power and special favors dominate the political landscape.   With these kind of numbers, it should be absolutely trivial for both the House and Senate to pass this simple bill.  With Congress' approval ratings at all time lows, this effort should be far more successful than the 1994 attempt of a similar nature.   In fact, Jim DeMint and three other Republicans have already filed legislation to achieve this goal.

Four Republican senators have introduced a constitutional amendment to limit senators to no more than two six-year terms in office, and representatives no more than three two-year terms. To become law, the amendment must be approved by two-thirds majorities of both the Senate and House, and by three-fourths of the states

This requires a super majority in Congress and approval of 3/4th of the states, but it can done and it should be done.  But with legislation already in existence, it will be simply a matter of getting candidates and existing politicians to co-sponsor the bills and send them to the floor for a vote.

If the vote somehow fails in either the House or Senate, the American people should use a vote against term limits as the *only* litmus test for 2012 and remove that individual from Congress.  It really is that simple and sending a message before the vote with this implied threat is a sure way to guarantee victory.   All future candidates must include term limits on their platform in order to be recognized as a legitimate candidate.  

Regardless of political stripe or ideology the concept of weakening power on the Federal level should be appealing.  For the opponents of the measure arguing that we should not punish success, keep in mind that the success we punish will be significantly less than the waste and corruption that will be automatically removed by this Constitutional amendment.

Term limits will be the first step to balancing power between the States and the Federal government and will return some much needed control back to the people.  Term limits combined with a reduction of federal powers via the closure of several Departments can be the first step in over 90 years for reducing scope of the federal government - a step that America must take in order to guarantee it's prosperity and freedom.