Term Limits Making a Comeback?
Here's an interesting analysis.
...these two measures only hint of what could be if the transpartisan coalition coalesces into a genuine movement. Using the Internet to transform government by making it far more transparent and enabling vastly greater citizen participation can unite people across the ideological spectrum.
What if their energies are focused on breaking the career politicians’ stranglehold? Coburn-Obama and the OpenHouse Project encourage change at the margins. Term limiting Congress would fundamentally shift power back to the people.
3 comments:
I'm pretty much on the fence on this one. I'm a supporter of term limits in concept, but in reality, I don't know if they're really a good idea. After all, the bureaucracy doesn't have term limits: shouldn't we have people in place to deal with them who have been around as long as they have?
I guess it depends on whether or not you support professional or amateur legislators. I am strongly in favor of term limits because if you look at the net worths of long-term folks coming out of Congress it's obvious that a hell of a lot of them are getting money from somewhere. That bothers me.
Been thinking more about this and since you seem tractable to the idea, consider this: Bureaucrats are government employees. The more experience an employee has in his job the better they perform (or at least that's the idea). Government employees also operate under some pretty strong ethics rules. For example, I cannot take out a State of Florida employee and pay for lunch.
In theory the same should be true for elected officials. But it's not. Congressmen have perks that would raise the hairs on anyone's head if it were any other job and, much as they talk a good game about ethics reform, they get elected and perpetrate this crap.
I had high hopes for the GOP congressional landslide in 1994; I believed in the Contract With America. Stupid me; those fuckers tossed out term limits and were more concerned with consolidating power than reform. Fast forward to 2006 and here we go again. The party loudly screaming about ehtics and pork spending gets elected and marginalizes ethics reforms and adds yet more pork to bills.
Hell, Garrett, the President has term limits and one could argue experience is required in that job far more than in the Congress or Senate.
Here's the other bonus for term limits (I am assuming two terms and you're out): Politicians would be much more principle-driven since they could not be re-elected. They wouldn't be out stumping for votes and missing out on their jobs.
Florida is a term-limit state. The Governor and legislature are term-limited (not sure about the State Senate). It has worked really well here - Florida is an extremely well-managed state.
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