Category: term limits

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The Self-Neutered Congress

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee again demonstrated why Congress’s approval ratings bob about in our toilet bowls. Amid the spectacle of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, one senator spoke not about judicial philosophy, but political reality.

“What’s the hysteria coming from?” asked Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), noting the circus-like atmosphere. His answer? The Supreme Court “is increasingly a substitute political battleground,” because “the Congress has decided to self-neuter.”

Blunt assessment.

“In our system, the legislative branch is supposed to be the center of our politics,” Sasse argued, adding dejectedly, “It’s not.”

Why not? 

“What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws,” he offered. “What we mostly do is decide to give permission to the secretary or administrator of bureaucracy X, Y, or Z to make law-like regulations.” 

“More and more legislative authority is delegated to the executive branch every year. Both parties do it,” explained the senator. “The legislature is impotent, the legislature is weak, and most people here want their jobs more than they really want to do legislative work . . .”

Sasse continued, “The real reason, at the end of the day, that this institution punts most of its power to executive branch agencies is because it’s a convenient way for legislators to be able to avoid taking responsibility for controversial and often unpopular decisions.”

Better to blame the bureaucracy.

“If your biggest long-term thought around here is about your own incumbency,” he said dismissively, “then actually giving your power away is a pretty good strategy.”

But “when Congress neuters itself,” warns the Cornhusker State solon, “it means the people are cut out of the process.”

A powerful case for term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability government transparency incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism political challengers Regulating Protest term limits too much government

Strange It Is

Arlington, Texas, term limits, democracy, initiative,City Council,

Strange for the Arlington, Texas, City Council to hold a meeting on a Sunday evening, much less one to “consider suspending the city charter.”

That is how the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported “the latest twist in the term limit controversy that has engulfed the city with a lawsuit and competing ballot proposals.”

Led by Zack Maxwell, citizens in this Fort Worth adjacent community of 400,000 gathered 11,000 voter signatures to place a term limits charter amendment on the November ballot. It would limit councilmembers to three two-year terms. It also figures in past service, so five of the eight current councilmembers would be blocked from seeking re-election in the coming two years.

With swift legislative prowess, the council responded, passing its own competing “term limits” measure, which incidentally allows them to stay 50 percent longer in office.

But there’s one problem: the council did not follow the law, which requires multiple readings, with one at a regular meeting. 

Actually, there’s a second problem: Mr. Maxwell challenged the council’s unlawful action in court. 

The court blocked the council’s measure. 

That left the council holding an unusual weekend meeting to suspend the rules and re-pass their fumbled alternative to the term limits voters really want. But news travels fast and city hall was “packed.” 

“You’re suspending the rules because your jobs are in jeopardy,” charged one man.

A woman told the council, “You guys should be absolutely embarrassed about this.”

“After hearing from dozens of angry residents,” the paper explained, “[t]he council voted unanimously to not suspend the rules, finally killing its own term limit proposal.”

Politicians doing the right thing . . . having exhausted every other possibility.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

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Photo from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

 

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Accountability incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption local leaders political challengers term limits

Sneaky Lobbyists Prefer Sneakiness

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The Arkansas Chamber of Commerce’s CEO and chief lobbyist, Randy Zook and Kenneth Wall, have formed Arkansans for Common-Sense Term Limits. 

The Chamber has a burning hatred for term limits — Common-Sense or otherwise — just like every other lobbyist and special interest. But Zook and Hall are fibbing in their name because they realize that voters love term limits. 

The ballot committee’s stated purpose? To “advocate for the disqualification or defeat” of the Arkansas Term Limits Amendment, which citizens just petitioned onto the ballot, collecting 129,000 signatures.

Defeating such a popular ballot measure isn’t likely. Instead, these politically-experienced lobbyists are preparing to sue, hoping to disqualify valid voters’ signatures on some ginned-up technicality, feigning confusion over the clear ballot language — anything that might keep democracy from coming this November.*

At issue? The difference between real term limits and ridiculous ones.

That is, between term limits set by citizens and those set by legislators themselves. 

Currently, legislators can serve for 16 years in a single seat under the state’s “limits.” And because two-year Senate terms aren’t counted at all, senators can stay as long as 22 years. 

Legislators snuck this past voters in 2014 with a ballot title claiming only to “establish” term limits . . . amidst other lies. Politicians thereby turned Arkansas’s toughest-in-the-nation term-limit law into the nation’s very weakest — a significant 50 percent longer than limits in any other state.**

Unfazed by all the corruption in the Arkansas Legislature, Chamber lobbyists are focused on putting politicians in their pocket for as long as possible. 

But those pesky Arkansas voters are once again in the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* After recently threatening to challenge the signatures of another initiative petition, Zook had to admit that he was not aware of a single problem or deficiency in the petition. But he quickly added, “It’s a very complicated process.”

** Arkansas’s term limits were the same as Michigan’s until 2014, three terms, six years in the House and two-terms, eight-years in the Senate.

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Original photo by Jeff Kubina

 

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Accountability general freedom government transparency incumbents insider corruption local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

“Dorky” Doesn’t Define It

term limits, Congress, myth, power, corruption

“Term limits,” said Daniel McCarthy, editor of The Modern Age, in a recent podcast conversation with historian Tom Woods, “was one of the dorkiest ideas of the 1994 so-called Newt Gingrich revolution.”

He characterized it as not having really gone anywhere.

Huh?

Granted, Congress is still not term-limited. But Americans in 15 states — including California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio, and representing 37 percent of the nation’s population — do enjoy term-limited state legislatures.*

And it sure wasn’t Newt Gingrich’s idea. Gingrich opposed it.

McCarthy repeats the old chestnut that what term limitation “winds up doing is actually weakening Congress and congresspeople in particular — relative to their own staff, who stay in Congress and become sort of experts and learn how to manipulate their congressman, and also relative to the executive branch who have people rotate in from time to time.”

Nifty theory — one very popular with politicians, who know that voters fear unelected influences on legislation.

The reality, however, is that Congress, designed by the Constitution’s framers to be both most powerful and closest to the people‚ is, today, the weakest branch.

And legislators are not term limited.

Ditch the “manipulation theory”; adopt a “collaboration theory”: legislators with Methuselah-long careers learn, sans “rotation in office,” to feather their own nests and those of the interest groups that fund their re-elections (and insider trading schemes).

Term limits remain popular with normal Americans because voters intuitively grasp the reality of such everyday corruption, which is directly tied to Congress having sloughed off so much constitutional responsibility.

We need term limits to restore a Congress sold out by professional politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Nine of the ten largest cities in America likewise have termed-limited their elected officeholders. For more information, see the links to the column from which this episode of Common Sense is condensed.

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Accountability general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders national politics & policies political challengers term limits

The Other Maine Thing

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Tuesday’s biggest election news was the victory for Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in Maine. This is the second statewide vote for this reform, which allows voters to rank the candidates by first choice, second choice and so on.*

Voters first passed it in 2016, but the next year the voters’ “representatives” in the legislature repealed the law, overturning their vote.

Undeterred, RCV supporters filed a referendum and again went out and gathered enough petition signatures to refer the legislature’s repeal to a vote of the people. On Tuesday, Maine’s voters vetoed the legislature, keeping Ranked Choice Voting.

Initiative and referendum sure are helpful.

RCV is not partisan; it requires the winner to have some level of support from a majority of voters and fixes the wasted vote problem. In Maine, however, the Republican Party opposed. On election day, Republican Gov. Paul LePage even threatened not to do his duty and certify the results.

“Paul Jacobs (Vice chair of the [FairVote] Board) whom I once knew and thought was a good American,” a Republican friend posted on my Facebook page, “has helped unleash the hounds of Hell” . . . adding that “now the voters are so confused by the terrible procedure that voting will be a nightmare this Tuesday!”

Yet voters used the new voting system for the first time Tuesday in candidate primaries before deciding Question 1 on their ballot — about keeping RCV. As one Portland voter put it, “It’s pretty easy to do, despite the negative publicity.”

We need more control over government with our vote. And when voters speak, politicians should listen.

It wouldn’t hurt political activists to listen, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* I’ve discussed the idea in this space many times — there’s more information on how it works here.

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Accountability general freedom incumbents insider corruption local leaders moral hazard political challengers Regulating Protest term limits

Missouri Shows Article V Action

Missouri, show me, Article V, term limits, legislature, congress,

There’s good news and there’s good news from the Show Me State.

First the good news. The Missouri House declined to follow the lead of the Missouri Senate during its recent legislative session in advancing a ballot measure to make a travesty, mockery and sham of state legislative term limits.

The proposed weakening of the limits would have doubled maximum legislative tenure from eight years to 16 years. Further, it would also have excluded terms already served from counting toward the new limit.

Had the measure ultimately been enacted, some incumbents would have been able to sit in a single seat for up to 24 years. This assault on term limits is dead . . . at least until next year.

Now the good news. The lawmakers deserve high praise for issuing a formal call for an amendment convention to consider the single subject of congressional term limits, making Missouri the third state to do so (after Florida and Alabama). In mid-May, the resolution for a Term Limits Convention easily passed in both chambers.

Thanks to a provision in Article V of the Constitution, if two thirds of the states (34 states) submit a similar application to convene a term limits amendment convention, the convention must be convened. The amendment that the convention produces would then be submitted to the states for ratification. Three fourths (38) are required to ratify.

We’re only in the first-steps stage here, but first steps are crucial.

Thanks for showing us how to do it, Missouri.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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