Unemployment Rate Needs to Rise in House, Senate:
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Commentary by Caroline Baum
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March 10 (Bloomberg) -- The public is mad as hell at Washington: at the corruption, the underhanded deals, the earmarks, the sense of entitlement that comes with lifetime employment. If we don’t want to take it anymore, we can do something about it.
We the People of the United States need to make clear to our representatives in Congress, or their challengers, that our vote in November is contingent on what’s-his-name’s support for term limits. No support, no vote. Got it?
Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, introduced a “Term Limits for All” constitutional amendment in November. The amendment, co-sponsored by Senators Tom Coburn, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Sam Brownback, Republicans of Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, respectively, would limit every House member to three terms and every Senator to two. Only with an end to the “era of permanent politicians” will real change come to Washington, DeMint said.
The last big push for term limits came from the party in power. When the Republican class of ‘94 swept into Washington, taking control of both houses of Congress, enacting term limits was high on their priority list. Twenty-three states had already term-limited their congressional delegations via referenda or their state legislatures, according to Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, a grassroots organization leading the charge. A 1995 Supreme Court ruling, U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, held that states do not have the authority to impose limits on congressional service.
Bipartisan Support
A different Supreme Court might see things differently. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said the Constitution is “simply silent on this question.” The silence isn’t about to be broken with President Barack Obama and the Democrats in charge.
That leaves an amendment to the Constitution, which requires passage by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states.
“Three-quarters of the states is not going to be a problem,” Blumel said. “They have a vested interest in rotation in office” as it provides more open seats.
Term limits is equally popular with the public, among Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike. In an October 2008 national poll commissioned by USTL, 83 percent of Americans said they support term limits, the highest ever.
Guess who opposes term limits? Incumbent politicians, their staffs and lobbyists in search of legislative favors.
Evolution of the Species
And why not? There is no better guarantee of lifetime employment than incumbency. In the last 10 congressional elections, the re-election rate in the House was 94.6 percent, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan, independent research group tracking money in U.S. politics.
Incumbency doesn’t confer the same degree of security on Senators, with “only” 87.5 percent of sitting senators returned to office since 1990.
How is it, then, the average length of service for senators at the start of the 111th Congress was 12.9 years, just over DeMint’s two-term target?
Answer: Because less than half the people appointed to serve out a senator’s seat end up running for office, according to the U.S. Senate Historical Office. For every Paul Kirk, an interim senator for five months following the death of Massachusetts’ Ted Kennedy, there is a Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, who has been in the Senate for 51 years.
Founders’ Reservations
Byrd, 92, represents the kind of permanent ruling class the Founding Fathers feared. They would not recognize today’s Leviathan as the same federal government they created and to which they gave enumerated powers.
If the voters are fed up, why not throw the bums out? Blumel said incumbency is such an overwhelming advantage, many elections are uncontested and others don’t offer voters a meaningful choice. “If Ted Kennedy had lived, would Massachusetts have had a significant election?” he asked.
Thirty-seven states place some form of term limits on their elected officials, according to USTL. New York isn’t one of them. In the 3,000 bi-annual elections for New York State Senate and Assembly seats since 1982, 39 incumbents were defeated, according to watchdog New York Public Interest Research Group. A state legislator is more likely to leave office because of ethical misconduct than death, redistricting or defeat at the polls.
Our elected officials may go to Washington to do good, but they end up doing well, as the saying goes. They forget why they were elected -- to do the people’s business -- and focus on their own: fundraising and campaigning for re-election.
Entitlement Reform
Congressman Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, who was forced to give up his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee last week, isn’t a bad person. He got comfy with the perks of power.
Rangel served his country with distinction in the Korean War before serving his Harlem constituents for 40 years. His ethical lapses include underreporting income and underpaying taxes, accepting corporate-sponsored trips, using official letterhead to solicit money for a City College of New York education center that bears his name, and maintaining four rent- stabilized apartments, a violation of New York City rules.
He’s not alone. Remove the security of lifetime employment and lawmakers might actually have to do something productive.
With public approval of Congress at an all-time low and support for term limits at an all-time high, it’s time to seize the day. What can you do? Sign the petition on the USTL Web site. Contact your senator or representative and tell him your vote is contingent on his support for term limits.
We the people have a voice.
(Caroline Baum, author of “Just What I Said,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
Click on “Send Comment” in sidebar display to send a letter to the editor.
To contact the writer of this column: Caroline Baum in New York at cabaum@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: March 9, 2010 21:01 EST
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Great article. We need terms limits asap.
