Posted on 03/28/2016 6:34:00 PM PDT by simka
Can we force Congress to accept Term Limits? And what is the appropriate method?
a Convention for Proposing Amendments. Those who wish to scare people away from this idea call it a Constitutional Convention,"a Convention for Proposing Amendments". Proposing amendments to what exactly?
If it's not a constitutional convention, what are you proposing amendments to at said convention?
They decided to not have term limits for these elected officials.
However, they never could foresee the bureaucrats that would become dominant.
The solution isn’t term limits - it is politicians who:
* actually reflect the population’s will
* respect the Constitution and don’t abuse the general welfare clause
* don’t ever pass another bill without reading it and understanding it
Hey!!! great idea...That would make the sitting Congressmen do what “we, the people” want or chance getting voted out FOR GOOD.....
Evidently our culture has degraded to the point that retaining a safe seat even into senility is considered a great honor.
The real problem in my mind is not long terms, but seniority. For some unknown reason, even though each congressman and senator is supposed to equally represent his constituency, some congressmen and senators are more equal than others due to seniority.
Although it's a long shot, it's possible that a case could be made that the way that the Congress and Senate organize themselves is unconstitutional. It should be easy to find a handful of corporations and individuals that have been financially harmed because their representatives were not on the right committees or not chairmen of a committee, and were thus denied equal representation.
Congress and the Senate do everything by committee. Certain committees have more power than others. The Chairman of a committee has more power than any of its members. Getting onto committees is not chosen by lottery, but assigned by party loyalty. How was any of that envisioned by the Founding Fathers who hated factions?
I wouldn't mind if congressmen and senators had long terms so long as seniority wasn't the only criteria for being on an important committee or being a Chairman.
If there were term limits to committee membership and chairmanships, then when a codger got too old his constituents will gladly dump him for new blood.
I doubt that the Supreme Court would want to touch something like this, especially with what happened with the ACA decision, but it might be worth a try.
It could at least shame the Congress and Senate into attempting some reforms.
No need to do that.
The best method is to eliminate the Congressional pension.
Here in California we have term limits for state offices. It’s a joke; they just bounce around from office to office as they are “termed” out. The same people stay in power with only a different office. Kind of like a shell game.
Term limits will just cement in place the power of government bureaucracy and apparatchiks behind the scenes. With term limits, Congressmen will come and go, but these people will remain forever running our complex and huge nanny-state, thus making them even stronger.
It is only fair.
Read Article V of the Constitution and be informed.
Almost as slim as people voting out their representatives after 2 terms.
So, basically, we’re f***ed.
Constitutional Amendment. And it will take an Article V States convention to do it. Because; no way in hell they will ever bring it up.
No, it is not.
Once you are in office have a major advantage in name recognition and in funding.
This makes any effort to unseat you an uphill battle. The longer you are in the harder it gets.
As the scales of justice are always tilted in favor of the defendant because of the enormous power of the state so the scales should be tilted away from the incumbent.
Term limits is one way to do that.
Term-limit pledges get left behind
Updated 4/12/2006
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-04-12-term-limits_x.htm
Not a “Constitutional Convention.” We don’t ever want one of those.
But an Article V Convention of the States could propose an amendment limiting the terms of members of Congress.
The States themselves can term limit or even recall their Congressmen, there is no limitation in the Constitution just how they are elected, how much they serve and qualifications.
Start at the state level to get your state legislature to apply for an amendatory convention of states via article 5 with the proposal for term limits. You need 2/3 of state legislatures to agree on the amendment(s). Then convention of states “shall” be convened by congress. Convention will debate and if 2/3 pass amendment at the convention, it goes to states for ratification which takes 3/4 of states.
If it gets close to convening an actual convention of states, especially for term limits, congress will try thwart the whole thing and SCOTUS will have to rule on it.
That was what I meant, thank you for clearing that up.
The Supreme Court has “amended” the Constitution to say that the States cannot term limit their members of Congress.
They’re wrong, of course. But it’s just as well. States have no incentive to term limit their members of Congress, anyway, because what that means is that the States that DON’T will have members who stay in Washington forever, accumulating power.
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