Natbony is the author and originator of The Lonely Realist. Ted Cruz is the lead sponsor of a proposed constitutional amendment that would impose term limits on members of Congress.
Senators would be limited to two six-year terms and House members to three two-year terms. Although voters in the s supported sweeping term limit legislation that imposed limits on state and local officeholders, the congressional term limits movement stalled in when the Supreme Court ruled that federal limits require a constitutional amendment.
The result has been congressional term limit stagnation , with more than 90 percent of House incumbents being re-elected year after year and the reelection rate among Senators falling below 80 percent just three times since More than 60 percent of Republicans and Democrats support the adoption of federal term limits , recognizing that the Congressional Incumbents Club is a paradigm of careerism, combining power, stature and influence with lavish benefits : a high salary; unparalleled business connections; limited working days; spectacular working conditions; periodic taxpayer-funded fact-finding trips; a sizable staff that could include family and friends ; exceptional medical, dental and retirement benefits; weakened insider trading rules; taxpayer funded legal expenses; the ability to moonlight at other jobs; free flights back and forth to the lawmaker's home state; a family death gratuity; and free parking.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter. No wonder those elected to Congress make every effort to hold onto their jobs and special-interest groups spend lavishly to ensure that those they've elected continue to protect and enhance their special interests. These perks help to explain why public confidence in Congress remains near an all-time low — 12 percent according to a Gallup poll. The consensus that Congress is broken is so widely-held that if ever there was an issue that should command bipartisan support, it's congressional term limits.
Although the Heritage Foundation concluded in that "term limits are here to stay as an important issue on the American political landscape," it and the U. Term Limits lobby badly misunderstood the degree of self-interest and power of the Congressional Incumbents Club. Unless a Constitutional change movement originates with the states and mobilizes its way to Congress as previously suggested , term limits bills are doomed to gather dust on congressional bookshelves. Term limits have been a net benefit at the state and local levels.
They would bring new perspectives to Congress, encouraging those with fresh ideas to run for office perhaps to some degree offsetting the Supreme Court's holding that gerrymandering is constitutional. Term limits also would diminish incentives for election-related spending that have proliferated in the careerist Congress especially following the Supreme Court's decision validating the solicitation and receipt of unlimited campaign contributions.
Although there are strong arguments against term limits, a further significant benefit would be a counterbalancing of incumbent financial and media advantages, as well as the name recognition, media access and embedded political contributions that flow to incumbency. Term limits also would incentivize members of Congress to nurture their successors by providing the types of apprenticeship experiences that make for practical staff training in other industries, thereby taking legislation out of the hands of lobbyists, bureaucrats and unelected Beltway insiders.
Ever since the military draft was abolished in , the U. And for many, that civic engagement carries over when they become veterans. The latest edition of the Veterans Civic Health Index , which measures the civic contributions of veterans, found that those who serve in the military outperform civilians in nearly every category, in some cases by significant margins. The report found that That's an increase of nearly 5 points for veterans from Nearly 80 percent of all veterans were registered to vote in , while non-veterans were under 73 percent.
Those gaps carry over when the data is broken down by age group: 75 percent of younger veterans were registered to vote and Among non-veterans under 50, those numbers were The debate to send service members to war, the oversight of national security, and the budget decisions that impact pay for military members come down to elected leaders in the federal government.
The immediate and direct connection to the military for decision makers in Washington can make a real difference. When those direct connections do not exist, the voter participation of veterans, service members, and military families becomes even more important," the report states.
The index also compares volunteerism among veterans. While the differences between veterans and non-veterans are not statistically significant in this category, there has been growth from the first edition of the report, in That report found 26 percent of all veterans provided volunteer work in their communities in ; by the most recent data available , that number was up to There was no difference among older veterans and non-veterans in , but in the under cohort, veterans slightly outperformed their counterparts Researchers did note a difference in the number of hours volunteered, writing: "Though they are less likely to volunteer, the older veterans who do volunteer are able to log more hours than younger veterans, averaging hours per year compared to In all categories, veterans log more hours than non-veterans.
The researchers also measured the social connectivity of veteran and non-veterans, examining factors like helping or spending time with neighbors. While the veterans were 10 percent more likely than non-veterans to demonstrate "neighborliness," the gap didn't carry over through all age groups. This is a surprising finding, given young veterans' propensity for service," the report states. That said, young veterans outpace their non-veteran counterparts in every interpersonal category related to neighborhood interactions.
In addition, the report measures political and community involvement, such as following the news, belonging to a group, engaging with public officials and donating to charity.
Veterans surpassed non-veterans in all categories, but the report paid particular attention to the difference when it comes to charitable giving. It found that almost 60 percent of all veterans, and more than half of young veterans donate to charity, compared to 52 percent of non-veterans and 45 percent of veterans under Researchers found one category in which non-veterans scored higher than veterans: engagement with family and friends. Nearly 85 percent of non-veterans said they talk or spend time with family and friends, 5 points higher than veterans.
The numbers are nearly identical among the younger cohorts. The report hypothesizes that geography could explain the lower numbers: "While many veterans return home after service, veterans on the whole may be more likely to settle down somewhere else. The geographic distance between a veteran and his or her family may play a role in the frequency of communication with family and friends.
What's the difference between high conflict and good conflict? Arguably "Hotel California," the classic rock hit from , is the Eagles' most iconic song.
It has sold over 16 million copies in the United States alone and lives to this day as one of the greatest rock songs of all time. My mind quickly shifted from the news of the day as the refrain kept repeating in my mind: "You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave! It has been quite some time since I last listened to the song, but I listened again last night.
I was once again moved by the masterful words of Glenn Frey, who wrote the lyrics with band members Don Henley and Don Felder. And as I listened my mind turned to the many theories that abound as to what the song means. And so as I listened my mind returned to the line referred to in the political discussion about Jan.
And so I researched more and learned that after the outline of the song was written, it was modified to address the temptation and the hidden traps that could corrupt you if you stayed too long at "Hotel California.
The song thus depicted a veil of social criticism towards the foundations of the American Dream, a symbol of the illusion of a better future that can also turn into an endless torment, able to lure you with its promises and then deceive you: leaving California means losing hope forever, and it would be a shame to leave the suite in the hotel of dreams. I wonder, is it as simple as that?
Is it a journey for us individually and collectively? We are, undoubtedly, on a journey of inevitable change that never goes quite as planned.
And as we take this journey, "along the way most of us want to check out but for some we can never quite leave.
Does the song scare you? Does it inspire you? Or is it just a masterful rock song meant to be enjoyed for the superlatively crafted arrangement that features many layers of acoustic guitar?.
If there were a silver bullet for democratic reform, you think we would have found it by now. With countries around the world experimenting with various forms of democracy for decades, if not centuries, surely we would have unlocked the cheat code to a representative and responsive government.
Instead, democracy is in constant flux and in need of perpetual reform because the rest of the world is as well — technology jumps, the economy shifts and people move. Democracy, though, can and must still progress. And, thankfully, it has. That progress has been through the steady adoption of reforms that make bolder steps possible down the road. The issue is that democratic reformers like to think in leaps, rather than steps. In the rush to make progress, sometimes reformers champion their partial solution to the detriment of solving the larger problem.
The biggest advocates of plastic straw bans of course care more about fighting climate change rather than how people slurp. But, in putting their solution ahead of the problem, these advocates were left flatfooted when an unanticipated issue occurred: climate skeptics responding so strongly to this small change that they became even less likely to support larger, more necessary reforms to our climate crisis.
Regardless of which straws you use, you have surely noticed the lack of competition in our elections. It's a problem with no single solution. As a result, reform camps have formed — each fiercely defensive of their idea being the best path forward, regardless of whether it's a leap or step.
There are the campaign finance reform folks. And the term limit fanatics. And the crusaders for their preferred version of voting reform. Among these various electoral reform ideas, one small step has emerged that, if implemented, can make future leaps possible. That small step is open primaries. The incremental step of simply making all candidates compete in one primary that's open to all parties will not immediately revive our democracy.
However, open primaries can open the door to enough progress that a domino of reforms can be triggered. Open primaries should be prioritized because they can engage a group of voters that's essential to all later reforms: independents.
These voters form an increasingly larger share of our electorate yet, in many states, are denied full participatory rights as partisan voters. Open primaries can fix this issue by giving every voter the same stake in the future of our democracy.
With that sense of empowerment, these voters will become more likely to back future democratic improvements. Voting has long been identified as an entryway to political engagement. In the electoral reform space, open primaries represent the simplest path to this basic level of inclusion. Other reforms may do this as well but typically involve other changes that may diminish the likelihood of popular adoption.
It's the simplicity of open primaries that makes this reform a necessary step, rather than a long-term endpoint. In other words, an open primary system — by inviting independent voters into our democracy and reform movements — is the horse that can bring a cart of electoral reforms into the realm of possibility.
A common fear among reformers is that you only get one bite at the reform apple — as if the perpetual engine of democratic innovation will suddenly stall. That's never been the case nor will it be.
Our world is too chaotic to think that voters will ever tire of imagining new ways to make our democracy better. Open primaries form the sort of simple step forward that can lead to bigger changes, which is why broad support for this solution is so important. The past week has brought both positive and negative news for supporters of expanded access to voting by mail. During last week's election, voters in New York rejected a ballot proposal that would have directed the Legislature to pass a bill allowing for no-excuse absentee ballots.
The result caught many by surprise, as most states — especially those that tend to vote Democratic — have such policies in place. Instead, only 38 percent of voters in the nation's fourth most populous state supported the proposal.
Meanwhile, the D. City Council began the process this week for institutionalizing vote-by-mail for the nearly , residents of the nation's capital. While Americans used mail-in voting at a historic rate in , New York lagged behind most other states.
According to a report issued this summer by the federal Election Assistance Commission, But only According to Ballotpedia, 34 states either provide all voters with a mail ballot or allow the use of an absentee ballot without providing a reason.
The remaining 16, primarily Republican-dominated states in the South, require voters to meet certain requirements in order to vote by absentee ballot. Another proposal, which would have allowed people to register to vote and cast a ballot on Election Day, was also defeated.
Proponents of such policies argue that same-day registration increases turnout, considered a key component of a strong democracy. And a third proposal, one that would have reformed the state's redistricting process, went down as well.
Anti-democracy forces are drowning out common-sense reforms with fear mongering scare tactics, and voters are listening. According to The Guardian, the Conservative and Republican parties vastly out-spent Democrats to fight those proposals and devoted significant on-the-ground resources as well.
While New York has settled these issues for the time being, some potential election reforms are just getting underway in Washington, D. New legislation was introduced Tuesday to make a series of changes to D. The city made a one-time decision to mail ballots to all voters for the general election, and this bill would codify such a system for future elections.
The bill would also increase the use of ballot drop boxes, establish voting centers and make Election Day a holiday. In doing so, we will broaden the number of people who are able to participate in our elections and feel more invested in their government.
In addition, Allen will chair a hearing Nov. Political campaigns in the U. In this episode of Democracy Works, the team looks at the political discourse around nine particularly deplorable elections. Listen now. This is the first in a two-part series on election integrity. The second part will look ahead to the election and the third will discuss why all Americans should oppose efforts to politicize vote-counting. Until recently, asserting that the presidential election would mark the end of American democracy would have seemed hyperbole, even ludicrous.
No longer. Observers as diverse as Bill Maher and the Cato Institute's Andy Craig have warned that a "slow-moving coup" or the "end of peaceful transfer of power in America" has already been put in motion by Donald Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party. Their case is persuasive. Trump Republicans have been purging the party of apostates on the national, state and local levels, as well as enacting state laws that would allow party operatives to overrule nonpartisan election officials and substitute election results more to their liking.
According to Craig, "Fringe legal theories about how to subvert the election are being workshopped and moved into the mainstream of Republican thought even as we speak. If Trump runs again, a near certainty, and the election result is close, the country could face a constitutional crisis with a potential for political violence that would make look tame. That subversion of a free and fair election is even possible is due to deep flaws in the Constitution, which does not include specific rules as to how presidential elections will be conducted and certified.
Most Americans are both unaware of these shortcomings and blissfully ignorant of the potential for a would-be autocrat to suborn the electoral process and seize power. In addition, most of those who believe a fraudulent presidential election would not be possible are unaware that one has already occurred.
The same logic should be applied to Congress. The bill I co-sponsored proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to limit the number of terms that a Member of Congress may serve. Members of the U. House of Representatives would be limited to three two-year terms of service. Senate would be limited to two six-year terms of service. Congressional term limits will provide the Legislature with new people who have fresh ideas and are strictly focused on serving the interests of their constituents during their short time in Congress.
Recent developments thus provide no basis for reevaluating past opposition to congressional term limits. In many respects term limits advocates have already succeeded in their most important objectives. Voters are less passively supportive of their own representative.
Candidates are increasingly self-limiting their own terms, opting as incumbents to leave earlier and as challengers to promise to spend only a short period of time in public life. Changes in party control of the Congress are likely to be more norm than exception in future years. Reformers in both the House and Senate have taken steps to limit the automatic advantages of seniority.
The president has been given a statutory line-item veto. Congress is grappling successfully with the budget deficit, thanks in part to the leadership of seasoned legislative leaders. But as countless students of Congress have demonstrated, the linchpin of the case for term limits—the desirability and feasibility of ending legislative careerism and returning to the citizen legislature originally conceived by the Founders—fails in every key dimension.
High turnover and amateurism in the nineteenth century Congress and in state legislatures did more to nurture parochialism, corruption, and special interest influence than enhance the public welfare.
Professionalism is a necessary offshoot of the growth and specialization of the modern world. If the political rules are rewritten to make it impossible to build a career in Congress, then the institution will have to rely on the professionalism of others to do its job, whether they are staff members, bureaucrats, or lobbyists.
Finally, any effort to use term limits to replace careerists with citizen-legislators is likely to produce some combination of itinerant professionals with weak institutional loyalties and elite amateurs whose resources and connections make a brief stint in Congress possible and profitable. Term limits should be rejected not only because they would fail to achieve the objectives of their advocates.
Their danger lies in the harm they might do to American democracy, by limiting the freedom now enjoyed by voters to end or continue the career of representatives who seek their continued support and by weakening the first branch of government by depriving it of experienced and knowledgeable legislators. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for inviting me to testify on the issue of congressional term limits and specifically on the wisdom of amending the Constitution to limit the number of terms members may serve in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.
Related Books. Renewing Congress By Thomas E. Stalemate By Sarah A.
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