Politicians do pay a price when they break a term limits pledge: No pledge breaker has ever been elected to higher office.
In 1992, Marty Meehan ran for Congress promising to serve four terms at most. In 1995, he rebuked congressmen for violating similar pledges, saying, “The best test of any politicians’ credibility on term limits, is whether they are willing to … limit their own service.” Meehan even filed a letter of resignation with the House clerk that supposedly would go into effect should he break his own word. But he did break it, finally leaving Congress only in 2007.
Meehan had always wanted to be governor. That was not to be.
Term limits have always been popular, and it’s embarrassing to be known for breaking a term limits pledge.
A new outfit called Alliance for Bonded Term Limits believes more than reputation should take a hit when politicians violate a term limits pledge. They think candidates should legally contract to pay up if they wimp out.
The plan, according to their website, is to “provide a vehicle for sincere candidates to demonstrate their commitment to limited tenure in office by voluntarily bonding their term limit promise with personal assets in advance of the election. These bonded assets of substantial worth will be forfeited to charity only if their promise is broken.”
Will it work? So far, the organization just has an idea. It’s a gleam in someone’s eye. But let’s keep our fingers crossed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Security Deposit for Term Limits?”
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It is high time Paul Jacob’s that you have returned to the issue of TERM LIMITS! Can you imagine 435 of your friends that would pass legislation that they have NEVER READ and in one case was introduced at 3:00AM and passed the same day?? Your WORST enemies would be more competent than the crooks and jerks in Congress. The 100 in the Senate are no better.…..
Dear Paul, You have only yourself to blame for my website.
Most folks think I am too unreasonable in asking everyone to NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS.
They think it’s an extremist position. But that’s the whole point! Congress will never listen to us UNLESS we scare the bejesus out of them! We must not reelect a great many of them to drive the point home.
The closer we get to a “Voter’s One-Term Congress”, the closer we’ll get to real term limits on Congress, and thereby a “Citizen’s Congress.
There is only one way to make term limits happen : By NEVER REELECTING anyone in Congress, the American voter could IMPOSE term limits on Congress.
In other words, don’t let anyone serve more than one term. That’s the only way to teach them that the voter is the boss! The “one term limit” can be eased AFTER we citizens get control of Congress.
Congress will never allow us to constitutionally term limit them. Our only choice is to NEVER REELECT them.
Remember too, it makes no difference who you vote for, as long as it is NEVER for any incumbent!
A Congress of freshmen who can’t take reelection for granted would be a trove of creative new ideas.
Nelson Lee Walker of tenurecorrupts.com
Mr. Walker I’ll gladly take credit for your website! But you deserve credit. Re-electing NO ONE is not a bad startegy at all. If I had a magic bullet to make term limits happen, we’d have them already. So let’s try the best approaches we can come up with.
And let’s never give up.
How about we amputate a finger every time they get re-elected. That’ll pretty much limit them to ten terms. And if that don’t work, we amputate some thing else for the twelfth time around.
And I’m only half joking.
[…] talked about the group last summer, when ABTL was little more than an idea. They were looking for candidates who would not only vow to […]
Yup, that shloud defo do the trick!