Essay On Congress Term Limits

want their fellow citizens who live and work in the real world -- the private

Many people think that with term limits we would lose experience, maturity, and knowledge of the workings of Congress. However, this is not correct. The workings of Congress need not be nearly so complex as careerists would have us think. However, great pains have been exerted to give us that impression. A term-limited Congress could get the nation's business accomplished in a fraction of the time that it takes now, with all the posturing, posing, ego trips and headline-grabbing. And a term-limited Congress could streamline all the procedures. As for experience we would be better off without some of it. What is needed is experience in the real world life experiences from new blood, with fresh ideas. With term limits, congressional staff people would gain control, is another widely used argument against term limits. The fallacy of that argument is that the staff people already have control. Through the years, Congress has abdicated it to them. Committee staffs write the legislation, and members' staffs read it, then tell members what's in it. Members themselves rarely read what they vote on. In a country where ignorance of the law is no excuse, members of Congress are often ignorant of many of the provisions of laws they vote on. Congress and its members could regain control from the staffs right now, if they had the will. They don't have the will. A term limited Congress that had the will could get control of the staffs in a very short period of

Living in the present and looking back at the past, we as citizens see what has worked and what can be improved; Congress is a good example of this. Some may say that Congress is a failure and some may be happy and proud of the way it functions and runs our country. For those who do not approve of it, the idea is to start fresh and get new ideas, people and habits into office. With the way Congress works today, that may not be the easiest tasks. In order to make changes in Congress, time is needed; a significant change cannot be made over night and expect it to run smoothly. One of the ways to bring change and settle the debate of whether or not to ‘restart Congress’ is to set term limits on congressional members. There should be term

Congressional terms have no limits. Controversy exists between those who think the terms should be limited and those who believe that terms should remain unlimited. The group that wants to limit the terms argues that the change will promote fresh ideas and reduce the possibility of decisions being made for self-interest. Those who oppose term limits believe that we would sacrifice both the stability and experience held by veteran politicians. They also point out that our election process allows the voter to limit terms, at their discretion. While experience and stability are important considerations, congressional terms should be limited to a maximum of two.

John Dingell, a member of the United States House of Representatives, served fifty-nine years and twenty-one days at this position. With no term limits set for the federal legislative positions in the United States, is this representation becoming redundant? Term limits can potentially be crucial in political reform of the United States that would bring new perspectives to federal legislative positions, warrant regular federal legislative turnover, and reduce incentives for wasteful election-related federal spending. Term limits can also pervert the entire understanding of what democracy is, by substituting the people’s will with term limits that may go against what the people want. United States federal legislative term limits have previously

As a remedy to the issues in Congress, term limits should be implemented in the US Congress because they can prevent corruption and provide turnover in Congress. Throughout the years, working as a Congressman has become

If Congress should have term limits or not has been a long debated question that is suggested as an amendment to the qualifications division of the Constitution. There are outstanding arguments on both side of the issue 5; unconstitutionality versus limiting power and mixture versus seniority are just a few. Term limits are requirement to upload the founder’s objectives, to inhibit unfair advantages given to resident, and to permit an assembly of additional benefits. Opponents of term limits have said in today’s world we need men and women to represent them in congress and term limits which will remove legislators when the start to become useful to constituents.

Recently, many political scientists have argued over whether today’s Congress is centralizing or decentralizing. Centralization allows Congress to act quickly and decisively, but at the expense of the members of Congress and their constituents, while decentralization protects and enhances the interests of individual members and their constituents, but at the expense of its ability to act quickly and decisively. At its birth, Congress was created as a decentralized body, and although it has fluctuated over the years, the Constitution, congressional incentive for reelection, the committee system, and weak central leadership has certainly maintained such a decentralized institution.

Member service longevity is not a trend that can be easily compared among states due to conflicting constitutional laws and the ability to move into higher elective offices. When comparing state governments to Congress, the states have a higher turnover rate because there are two sources of turnover that the Congress does not have to deal with. One is that certain state chambers are described as springboard states, where the representatives have a better chance of gaining a higher elected office than other states do. When the legislator has a chance to rise in the government there tends to be a higher turnover rate. These legislators "also tend to be more responsive to constituents on policy preferences than are legislators in other sorts of chambers" (Maestas 2000). Term limits also play a large role in the turnover rates in state governments compared to that of Congress' rates. States that have term limits seem to have higher rates due to the fact that "legislators in term-limited legislatures are less obliged to focus on their

Abstract: The term limits movement for state legislatures has been gaining momentum. Fourteen states adopted limit initiatives in 1992. The goal of this final paper was to determine the factors that have contributed to the growth of the term limits movement. Much background research was conducted to determine the characteristics of the movement. Past research suggested several apparent reasons for the growth of the movement. These reasons included the existence of direct initiative, rates of legislator turnover, incumbency, regional political culture, citizen involvement, and the influence of interest groups.The overall questions for the project were to evaluate the factors which may have affected the movement. Including: what factors have influenced the growth of the term limits movement? In order to answer this question several hypotheses were tested for factors which have been used to explain the movement. The overall research conclusion was that the only explanatory factor for the growth of the term limits movement was the existence of the direct state initiative. The other factors include the regulation of the congressional developments. More states would have term limits if they had the power of initiative and term limits will likely be restricted to states which have this power, however, they should be placed in congress.

In the 2nd era Congressman started viewing the Senate and House as careers. Although, it was still a part-time position meeting only 6 months out of the year. Now they started seeking more and more for re-election. Party leaders and they public at home started to see there was a benefit to longer terms in Congress. The people began to see their needs better conveyed, party leaders saw that seniority and influence was more easily obtained giving them more power.

A common belief across the United states is that congress is not performing as well as they could, or should, be. One solution that citizens often come to, is implement term limits for Congress. Unlike many political debates, this one cannot be clearly divided between republican and democratic viewpoints. Term limits would be a clear message to congress saying, ‘this is the amount of time you have to fix the problems facing this country, and if you cannot do that, we will replace you someone who can’. Though no longer on the federal political agenda, the desire for congressional term limits has steadily grown over time for many reasons. Among these lie the desires to push career politicians out of office, to build trust with the American people, and preventing any sort of greed that might occur in a longstanding politician.

By having a term limit on Congress, there will be a wider age range. This will lead to more “21st century” views. I feel that this is crucial when trying to keep the American political system up to date with society and its continuous changes. Compared to most democratic European countries, America has very few women in Congress. Less than 20% of Congress members are women.

The president is the foreign policy leader for the United States with an important political, military and economic role in the international arena. If there is collision between the president and congress, can congress restrain the president in foreign policy making?

Since it has been shown that there has been a dramatically decreasing percentage of new members joining Congress, then it must be clear that the people who were previously serving decided to continue serving as stated above. Albert D. Cover provides a table which highlights the extremely large percentage of congressional reelections. He analyzes the incumbents who were seeking reelection in between the years 1956-1976. Something that is worth mentioning is that never throughout any of those years did the reelection percentage even go below 85%. The highest reelection percentage was in 1968 with an outstanding 97.8% of the incumbents who sought to be elected once more to office were successful (Cover, p. 525). That is to say, nearly all of the incumbents were going to be elected again. On the other hand, the lowest reelection percentage was in 1964 with, still a remarkable, 86.6% (Cover, p 525). This shows that even the lowest percentage of reelection is still extremely high, so it is very probable that an incumbent will continue to keep their prestigious position in