Posted on 12/30/2020 5:59:11 AM PST by rustyweiss74
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) in an interview discussing the ‘swamp’ in Washington, D.C., called for term limits “for bureaucrats.”
Blackburn made the comments in an appearance with Steve Hilton on Fox News’ “The Next Revolution.”
“Big Business, Big Government, Big Tech, Big Media — they all go hand in hand, and they’re all a part of the D.C. swamp,” she explained to Hilton.
Under President Trump, Blackburn added, Americans found out “just how murky the swamp is.”
If term limits are what drains the swamp in D.C., as Marsha Blackburn states, then President Trump’s inability to tackle that campaign promise almost assuredly cost him his own second term.
As a candidate in 2016, Donald Trump announced how he intended to “drain the swamp” of corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle in Congress, and that included implementing term limits.
The President vowed that if he were to win against Hillary Clinton, he “will push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.”
Time Magazine fretted at the time that Trump’s proposed term limits would “eliminate half of Congress,” something that in hindsight would have been a good thing for America.
Not tackling that campaign promise isn’t entirely the President’s fault, however. Getting a constitutional amendment to impose term limits would have required two-thirds support from the very people you’re trying to term out.
In 1995, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich proposed a limit of 12 total years for congressional terms, a perfectly reasonable suggestion.
(Excerpt) Read more at menrec.com ...
of course. ALong with automatic closure of Federal Agencies after a certain number of funding cycles.
If they can’t get on top of the problem for which they were created in 18-36 months-prolly not going to happen.
Defenestrate the mandarin classes.
Drain the Swamp. Euthanize (fire) the Swamp Critters.
Allow administration unlimited power to fire and replace all government workers.
4 years. Medical benefits, etc., vest after 8 years. :-)
Yea...I’d prefer to start with the senators and congress critters first. 12 years total (senat and or Congress or combined) and they’re gone. Never to return.
“calls” tells?
LADY MACBETH
Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why,
Then, ‘tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my
Lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
Fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
Account?—Yet who would have thought the old man
To have had so much blood in him.
Just step down, Marsha. An informed citizenry with an UNCORRUPTED BALLOT BOX can take it from there.
California has term limits, how this that working out?
This is the way things USED to be. It was known as the Spoils System. I remember being "taught" in 7th grade, in the late 50s, how "unfair" this was.
Wikipedia says (in part):
The term was used particularly in politics of the United States, where the federal government operated on a spoils system until the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 due to a civil service reform movement. Thereafter the spoils system was largely replaced by nonpartisan merit at the federal level of the United States."Nonpartisan merit"! Now there's a knee-slapper!
ML/NJ
dang - how IS that working out in California?
dang - how IS that working out in California?
Bureaucrat .... any federal employee not elected to office.
Since Clinton removed the mandatory retirement age of 65, federal employees have stayed around till they retired, or died. In 1994, there was a fellow federal employee, THAT WAS A B-25 PILOT IN WORLD WAR 2!!!
While term limits is a nice idea, the people who do the REAL damage are the unelected staffers, bureaucrats, and lobbyists. Congresscritters spends most of their time fundraising limiting the amount of damage they can do. Their legislation is drafted by lobbyists or their staff. The Congresscritter has read, at most, the executive summary.
What we really need is turn over in the lobbyists, staff members, and bureaucrats.
Agree, the unelected need to be limited as well.
The cities will be razed this summer. Biden will lose control and the socialist left will make their push.
They'll just find some other way to suck at the gov't teat without regulation, you can't put a halter on the neck of ever-expanding gov't with term limits. Look at what happens - e.g. in California even with term limits the state legislature is just a boot camp for state administrators and consultants, they just flip around the revolving doors. What we need is term limits for the laws enabling all this nonsense...after all we're supposed to be subject to the rule of law, not personal pronoun.
Here's a proposal I've nicknamed "Absolute Sunset". It's a charter or Constitution-level change, and it can even be implemented incrementally at the local, state, and federal level. The basic premise is to require a regular public re-affirmation by elected representatives for every law, regulation, directive, edict, proscription, ordinance, policy, whatever you call the rule-making artifact. This would take place at the beginning of every session, with no discussion or debate, just an affirmation required with the same required majority from the original body required to pass the original bill. The order of the list of items should be in the reverse of the original precedence of enactment, allowing newer items superseding the older to be removed first. The term for which the affirmation (including the original passage) is valid should be at least the term of two sessions, but on beginning of the subsequent session, the affirmation should be required. If the affirmation fails, then the subject article expires at the end of the session unless re-instated in full as originally written. In addition, all precedent and other derivative aspects of government founded on the failed article should be then discarded so as to clean it out of the system completely. An act of repeal should be limited to the repeal and be equivalent to a failure of affirmation, not new rules, so repeals are never discarded.
Then and only then would you know what interests your elected representatives truly represent, because they would be on the spot every single session for the basics of the government. Should they fail to preserve the laws, it will be evident. Should they prefer to let a bad law stand, it will be so evident. Since the schedule of what will be put to the question is fixed, every election will offer an opportunity for the candidate to pledge their affirmation, so it may be a subject of contention during the election. And then it will be entirely clear as to whether they keep their promises and stand by their principles.
This will also have the benefit of cleaning up the books over time so that the dead hand of failed and unpopular laws and regulations will not strangle us for generations. The ever-expanding government enabled by ever-expanding body of law will be subject to finite limit.
The fact that such a thing in necessary probably means it won’t work.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams.
now, there’s an idea!
Government jobs are careers. People who go into government would like to work their lives in government so that they can get a decent pension at the end. they wouldn't want to be kicked out before they were fully vested.
Bureaucrats are supposed to be limited to only doing what the law created by the legislature says. This was reinforced when Nixon tried to ignore some aspects of a law passed by congress but the courts told him 'No. Your executive branch including the low-level bureaucrats have to execute the law as passed.'
This is why executive orders are so problematic. They are an end run around the legislature that leads to an imperial presidency. Maybe a monarchy would be better, but this should be something decided by the people and not implemented by the president.
So the problem comes down to the legislature failing to do its job and passing simple, meaningful, and enforceable legislation. Their failure to do so is most likely due to the current polarization of the country. We are undergoing a transition from a uniquely American society to something more closely approximating what is going on in Western Europe.
Either the populace has to wake up, become more actively conservative, and move the country back towards its founding principles, or we need to make our peace with the globalist agenda represented by the EU.
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