Category: term limits

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incumbents national politics & policies term limits

The Age of Octogenarians

Senator Chuck Grassley

As someone who fervently hopes to some day reach the age of 88 — and still actively contribute — I have only heartfelt well-​wishes for Chuck Grassley, the senior U.S. Senator from Iowa.

Grassley celebrated his birthday earlier this month. Then, last week, after 59 consecutive years in elected office (six in the U.S. House, 41 years thus far in the Senate, along with 12 prior in the state legislature), the Republican incumbent announced he will be seeking re-​election to the U.S. Senate next year.

At 88, Mr. Grassley isn’t the oldest Senator — Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D‑Calif.) is three months his elder, and U.S. Rep. Don Young (R‑Alaska) owns the title of Oldest Octogenarian in Congress, born 13 days before Feinstein back in 1933. 

We all remember Sen. Strom Thurmond (R‑SC) turning 100 while supposedly still “serving” in the Senate. That wasn’t pretty. 

Grassley, on the other hand, appears in great shape, both mentally and physically — doing 22 push-​ups before cameras and a crowd at a recent event.

He would be only 95 years old when completing that full term. And he is very likely to be reelected.

“Grassley has proved to be the most reliable vote-​getter in Iowa for the entirety of his four decades in the Senate,” The Washington Post informed, concluding: “Grassley’s candidacy effectively then takes Iowa off the board as a competitive race.”

I have no problem with Sen. Grassley’s age. I do have a problem with the power of incumbency, a system that allows one man to wield power for decades and leaves our elections so much less competitive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption term limits

On Glissando Skids

glissando

As corrupting as political power may be, not everyone is corrupted by it, at least not to the same grievous extent.

Yet, even if one starts out with some measure of integrity and good intentions, the longer one is entrenched in power, the more likely one is to lose one’s way. Little by little, and then in leaps and bounds, one goes along to get along, learning to appreciate the perks of power and the advantages of cooperating with party bosses, forgetting one’s desire to buck the establishment and always do the right thing.

Within just five years, formerly fiscally conservative U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, both Republicans “representing” Idaho, started swerving toward the abyss. Now they’re on glissando skids.

Bryan Smith, vice chair of the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee, observes the dispiriting trajectory in a recent commentary.

He cites New American’s Freedom Index, which assesses how well lawmakers work for “limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and avoiding foreign entanglements.”

Risch and Crapo slid from a rating of 95% and 95% in 2012 to 80% and 80% in 2015, 50% and 50% in 2018, and 35% and 30% in 2020. Both have so far gotten a score of 90% the first half of 2021, yet both also voted Yes to the recent $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill.

Smith remembers how both men once proudly opposed runaway government spending.

This is hardly new — or confined to Idaho. As a 1994 Cato Institute analysis concluded: “members of Congress become more pro-​tax-​and-​spend the longer they serve in Washington.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

To Do Item #1

It’s been a while.

In the early 1990s, citizens in a slew of states succeeded in term-​limiting their state legislators. In a few of those states, politicians or the courts managed to kill the term limits despite the popular support for them. Nevertheless, today 15 state legislatures are term-limited.

The last legislature to be term-​limited was that of Nebraska, where voters imposed two-​term (or eight-​year) limits on their unicameral legislature in 2000.

Since then, progress has been slower than we’d like. 

Why? Because many politicians work so very hard to keep term limits from being established. Their dastardly tactics include undermining the right of citizen initiative where it exists and blocking statewide citizen initiative rights from being enacted in states that currently lack such rights.

Now North Dakota is about to show us how limiting terms gets done: with the help of widespread public support and dedicated signature gatherers.

A term limits measure has been approved for distribution by North Dakota’s secretary of state. Petitioners need to collect more than 31,000 valid signatures in order to get a constitutional term limits question on the November 2022 ballot.

If the amendment gets to the ballot, it will pass. If it is passed, it will establish term limits of eight years on state representatives, state senators, and the governor. And lawmakers would be barred from proposing a change or repeal of the term limits themselves — only citizens through the initiative process could do so.

Signatures first. 

Maybe yours. If you live in North Dakota, you know what to do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A Plutocrat’s Expensive Friend

Larry Householder, Ohio

An “expensive friend” — in documents obtained by federal prosecutors, that’s how former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones sized up former Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder.

What made the Speaker so Big Ticket?

“Republican Larry Householder hatched a plan to cement his hold on power for an additional 16 years,” The Columbus Dispatch reported, “and Akron-​based FirstEnergy Corp. invested $2 million into the effort.”

Their scheme?

Petition a citizen initiative onto the ballot to slap lifetime term limits on legislators, rather than the current eight-​year consecutive limits, as bait to hook pro-​limits voters — emphasizing this toughening part, while hiding the fact that the eight-​year limits in each chamber would be doubled to a 16-​year limit in either.

The initiative would also set a brand-​new clock, wiping out all past service so that Householder could command the House, uninterrupted, for 16 more years. 

“He told me he’ll retire from [the House],” Jones joked with an associate, “but get a lot done in 16 more years.”

The pandemic stopped Householder’s scam. And then, last July, the FBI dropped the other shoe, arresting him for racketeering. Now awaiting trial, Householder has been pushed out as Speaker and then expelled from the House completely — the first time in over 150 years.

FirstEnergy fired CEO Jones — who, according to The Washington Post, “prosecutors continue to investigate” for his “involvement in a $60 million bribery scheme secretly funded by the company to win a $1 billion legislative bailout.”

Mr. Householder never liked term limits, but his corrupt attempts to thwart them serve as evidence of their importance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Senatorial Senility

“We have the oldest Senate in American history,” Roxanne Roberts writes in The Washington Post. 

Roberts rattles off the five octogenarians — Sen. Diane Feinstein (D‑Calif.), age 88; Sen. Charles Grassley (R‑Iowa), age 87; Richard Shelby (R‑Ala.), age 87; Sen. James Inhofe (R‑Okla.), age 86; and Sen. Pat Leahy (D‑Vt.), age 81 — and tells us that “Twenty-​three members of the Senate are in their 70s,” noting that “only one is under 40.”

That fledgling 34-​year-​old whippersnapper is newly elected Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff. But being 30 years younger than the current Senate average doesn’t make him better, that’s for sure.

Age isn’t the problem. Not exactly.

My issue with octogenarian Senators Feinstein, Grassley, Shelby, Inhofe and Leahy is that they’ve been politicians in Washington for the last 28, 40, 43, 34, and 46 years, respectively.

That’s way too long. They stop being one of us, representing us. And, left, right or in-​between, we know it.

“Senior senators often stay for decades,” Roberts argues, “because voters are reluctant to give up the perks of incumbency: Seniority, committee chairmanships and all the money poured into their states.”

Ha! The idea that actual voters are unwilling to “give up the perks of incumbency” is laughable. It’s the incumbents themselves who leverage their votes in Congress to dramatically out-​fundraise their challengers. 

Voters rarely get much choice.

No wonder, then, that when people got a chance to vote to term-​limit their own congressmen — they did so enthusiastically. 

President Truman once quipped that legislative term limits would help “cure senility, and seniority — both terrible legislative diseases.” He understood that the Senate’s age problem is not time on the planet. It is the time in office.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Another example was the late Sen. Thad Cochran, who thankfully decided to step down in 2018 — at 80 years of age after 44 years in Congress — none too soon.

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You’re Sued!

Arkansas, term limits

Firing politicians is what democracy’s all about.

But politicians don’t like being fired. Even when “You’re fired!” is a signature line. It definitely explains why incumbents tend to oppose term limits. 

As shown in the long history of term limits in my home state, Arkansas. 

In 1992, an all-​volunteer petition drive placed the initiative on the ballot and a grassroots campaign beat the Good Ole Boy network and their $500,000 in paid media warnings of “outsiders.” 

The victory sent shockwaves through the Arkansas political establishment; term limits received more YES votes than President-​Elect Bill Clinton had garnered in his home state.

Arkansas pols have been at war with term limits ever since. The latest assault came in April, when legislators passed an “emergency” measure now known as Act 951. 

The Act bans people found guilty of minor misdemeanors (trespassing, vandalism, any violation of drug laws) at any time in their lives — even many decades ago — from working as paid petitioners. The new law also limits the pool of petitioners to state residents, something not done for any other political job, or for those carrying Arkansas’s candidate petitions.*

That’s why Arkansas Term Limits, Liberty Initiative Fund, U.S. Term Limits, et al., filed a complaint in the federal Eastern District of Arkansas alleging constitutional rights violations under the legislature’s Act 951. 

“I was never a supporter of term limits until this bunch got in office,” offered Arkansas Times editor Max Brantley in response to our lawsuit, “and gave themselves essentially unlimited terms and set about running roughshod over human rights.”

Cries of “You’re fired!” are coming soon. But first, to pry back petition rights in Arkansas, the catchphrase is, “You’re sued!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* In recent years, similar residency requirements have been unanimously struck down in rulings of the 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th federal Circuit Courts of Appeal. Earlier this year, a federal judge enjoined enforcement of Maine’s similar law.

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meter /​ JG

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