“Unless and until we reduce the size of the federal government, I do NOT want the bureaucrats to be running the place, and with term limits, every freshman class would be at a disadvantage against the well-protected, heavily unionized federal government workers.”
Are you forgetting the massive problem with entrenched, bought off, well protected elected government bureaucrats. Term limits would prevent the accumulation of federal power. That is a good thing. It would also return the citizen statesman/stateswoman idea of people coming out of the private sector to serve the nation, with the expectation of returning to the public sector.
I think if we have responsive citizen politicians, we’ve got little to worry about with these public unions. We will then put them in their place.
Confronting Unlimited Government - Lessons from the Term Limits Movement
Some excerpts:
By 1995, 23 states had adopted term limits for their Members of Congress, but in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, the Supreme Court struck down these laws, arguing that they added additional qualifications for service in the House of Representatives that were contrary to Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. This shifted the strategy of the movement from laws passed by state legislatures to Congress and a potential constitutional amendment.
Because many in both parties opposed term limits, the push for a constitutional amendment proved futile, but the measures imposing term limits on state legislatures remained in effect. We can therefore judge the results of term limits by how they have operated in practice at the state level to...
Ultimately, while the term-limits movement was very successful both in reducing the length of time that state legislators serve in office and in rallying the public against runaway government spending and other ills that plague modern government, it did not accomplish its broader political goals of reducing spending and restoring deliberation. The reason for this failure is that runaway spending and the lack of deliberation are only symptoms of a deeper, systemic problem: the rise of the modern bureaucracy and expansion of the administrative state.
The massive expansion of government in the early 20th century and the establishment of bureaucracies in which scientific experts make policy concerning complex issues fostered careerism among Members of Congress. More power made congressional offices more attractive, and the difficulty of dealing with bureaucratic experts required legislators to have more experience to be successful. At the same time, the party system that allowed for greater rotation in office was undermined. These developments created the problem that the term-limits movement confronted.
I used to be a Term Limits cheerleader, but for now, until the size of government is drastically reduced...I am against them.