What are your reasons for supporting term limits on elected officials when they can be voted out of office by their electorate?

Because the electorate has not done its job.

Tramp96 said:

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Because the electorate has not done its job.

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According to who?

Because Dominion voting machines and Smartmatic software keep incumbents like McConnel and Pelosi in office forever.

I think a better option would be to have a primary election pool of money accessible to all candidates of X party so that money and donor influence are not the largest determining factors of a candidates success in the primary phase.

But I suppose that is up to each party's chair / platform to enact that.

first because the current system generally favors incumbents.

and second because if you force politicians back into the private sector after a certain amount of time it incentivizes them to make better law knowing they will have to return to living under whatever they pass.

Whom

To shut down the "Career Politican" diploma mill.

TexAgs91 said:

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Tramp96 said:

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Because the electorate has not done its job.

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According to who?

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Look at this list of longest serving congressmen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_United_States_Congress_by_longevity_of_service

No one should be serving a half of a century or a third of a century. That just opens them up to all sorts of corruption and undue influence.

Look at how wealthy the majority of these people got while "serving" in Congress on salaries less than $200,000/yr.

I used to be anti-term limits. But the Bidens and Pelosis of the world, who have gotten filthy rich solely due to their office, have completely changed my mind.

Incumbent reelection rate: 90% (Wikipedia)
Congress approval rating: 18% (RCP)

These stats seem fairly self-explanatory of why we should consider term limits for Congress.

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Incumbent reelection rate: 90% (Wikipedia)
Congress approval rating: 18% (RCP)

These stats seem fairly self-explanatory of why we should consider term limits for Congress.

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Good point!

The Democrat & Republican party apparatus is almost always arrayed behind the incumbent during the primaries. Incumbents have a ridiculous advantage over any intra-party challengers. Which means if you live in a solid blue or red area you are stuck with the incumbent turd for decades.

BlackGoldAg2011 said:

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first because the current system generally favors incumbents.

and second because if you force politicians back into the private sector after a certain amount of time it incentivizes them to make better law knowing they will have to return to living under whatever they pass.

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Excellent argument.

The lazy complacent electorate allows the activists in the two parties to control their choices via the primaries and those same activists in the party in power are usually close with the incumbent. It is very difficult to unseat an incumbent. Its like a drug addiction.

hoopla said:

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What are your reasons for supporting term limits on elected officials when they can be voted out of office by their electorate?

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Check it out.

Politicians are dirty, right?

The longer they stay in DC the more corrupt they get and the better suited they become on how to HIDE their corruption.

Rookies with term limits won't have the TIME to learn how to be corrupt and hide it. Lobbyists will have to get twice the sex in half the time. When things like this move too quickly, mistakes are made and people get caught.

Term limits will LIMIT corrupt activities in politicians for FEAR of being caught, thus enabling them to do what's RIGHT, instead of what will keep them elected and rich.

I would also add a stipulation that sitting members of the Congress and the Senate shall not be exempted from any laws they have passed or have passed prior to their election to office.

C@LAg said:

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because politics are rigged way too heavily towards incumbents.

and incumbents of both parties serve their reelections first, party second, then their constituents.

incumbents, of both parties, lose focus and the pulse of their electorate.

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This. And since the MSM is partisan, they will skew coverage to mislead voters. Entrenched political machines do the rest.

Much like how in I/T the choice for an occasional forced reboot/or update of the system is not left only to the user, the same is true here. For the sake of the system, reboots, end of terms and forced re-starts, should take place. Inertia has allowed the present to become enslaved to old radicals of the Boomer generation.

Term limits would head that off.

Clob94 said:

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Lobbyists will have to get twice the sex in half the time.

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Luckily there's medication that will help with that.

Let's wave The magic wand and in 2024 Anyone who has completed more than two terms and Congress is unable to be reelected. I'm trying to think through the unintended consequences here.

The biggest one that comes to my mind is that this may lead to a Congress of AOCs and MGTs rather than citizen legislators who have the best interest of the republic at heart.

Malibu2 said:

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Let's wave The magic wand and in 2024 Anyone who has completed more than two terms and Congress is unable to be reelected. I'm trying to think through the unintended consequences here.

The biggest one that comes to my mind is that this may lead to a Congress of AOCs and MGTs rather than citizen legislators who have the best interest of the republic at heart.

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This is why I was originally opposed to term limits. I don't want a bunch of congress members that come in and do a crap ton of damage because they have a short time in.

But I don't want the career politicians either who make their fortune from being in Congress for multiple decades.

There has to be a happy medium. 2 terms for Senators (12 years) and 6 terms for Reps (12 years)?

Lobbyist would have to work harder and spend more money to control new members of Congress.

That's probably the right approach. There's also just the X's & O's of legislation and institutional knowledge that is needed to run any effective organization, so a quick turnover isn't ideal either. Goldilocks term limits.

Politicians who have served long terms start to affect the politics of States that did not elect them.

There is some thought that term limits would give more power to bureaucrats who aren't as responsible to the voters. The idea behind that is that it takes a while (three or four years) for a newly elected official to get a firm grasp on his office. If they were just getting up to speed when they are removed from office, then they would never really become effective at dealing with bureaucrats. If this is true, then term limits would do more to promote bureaucracy than whatever else we might do.

Big changes should be avoided. Make whatever changes we must make in small steps and slowly so that we can keep what we need and have a better chance of reversing what needs to be reversed.

MouthBQ98 said:

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The lazy complacent electorate allows the activists in the two parties to control their choices via the primaries and those same activists in the party in power are usually close with the incumbent. It is very difficult to unseat an incumbent. Its like a drug addiction.

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While there is some truth in this, the election reform bills of the last few decades have made it so that it is extremely difficult to beat out an incumbent unless you have one of 3 things: High name recognition, Heavy political connections/family, or have immense personal wealth. Even then the odds are generally against you.

Both parties are happy with the incumbent protected class. Remember the first job of an elected politician is to be re-elected.

I'm a huge fan of politicians only getting a single term as an elected official and a single "term" for unelected officials as well as any other government employee.

Career government employees are just as bad as career politicians.

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Career government employees are just as bad as career politicians.

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They're worse IMHO.

hoopla said:

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What are your reasons for supporting term limits on elected officials when they can be voted out of office by their electorate?

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• Eddie Bernice "scholarship scandal" Johnson
• Hank "My fear is that the whole island will become so over populated that it will tip over and capsize" Johnson
• Sheila Jackson "let me have a democrat campaign volunteer pose as a doctor to say something positive about the affordable care act" Lee

Those are the first 3 that come to mind.

I don't consider AOC, Omar, and Tliab as they are fairly new and just bat **** crazy...

Tea Party said:

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I'm a huge fan of politicians only getting a single term as an elected official and a single "term" for unelected officials as well as any other government employee.

Career government employees are just as bad as career politicians.

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I disagree with this. The bigger problem with the bureaucratic state is that one, it is impossible to fire bad employees. For two, our administrative state is designed by lawyers who are more interested in process than results. The Empire State Building was built in less than a year, can you even imagine that today?

I want experienced employees heading departments, making decisions, and being good fiduciaries or a taxpayer budget. Experience is not a bad thing. Lack of accountability and a system that biases process over results is.

Malibu2 said:

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Tea Party said:

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I'm a huge fan of politicians only getting a single term as an elected official and a single "term" for unelected officials as well as any other government employee.

Career government employees are just as bad as career politicians.

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I disagree with this. The bigger problem with the bureaucratic state is that one, it is impossible to fire bad employees. For two, our administrative state is designed by lawyers who are more interested in process than results. The Empire State Building was built in less than a year, can you even imagine that today?

I want experienced employees heading departments, making decisions, and being good fiduciaries or a taxpayer budget. Experience is not a bad thing. Lack of accountability and a system that biases process over results is.

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A big issue with our political system is that the most talented in our society have no interest in political office. They can make more money in the private sector. So you get grifters who use the system to increase their wealth because they can't do it through legitimate means.

But then I also don't believe every adult citizen should be allowed to vote either.

Tramp96 said:

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Malibu2 said:

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Let's wave The magic wand and in 2024 Anyone who has completed more than two terms and Congress is unable to be reelected. I'm trying to think through the unintended consequences here.

The biggest one that comes to my mind is that this may lead to a Congress of AOCs and MGTs rather than citizen legislators who have the best interest of the republic at heart.

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This is why I was originally opposed to term limits. I don't want a bunch of congress members that come in and do a crap ton of damage because they have a short time in.

But I don't want the career politicians either who make their fortune from being in Congress for multiple decades.

There has to be a happy medium. 2 terms for Senators (12 years) and 6 terms for Reps (12 years)?

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Yep, 12 years is more than enough time. POTUS only gets 8...

BlackGoldAg2011 said:

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first because the current system generally favors incumbents.

and second because if you force politicians back into the private sector after a certain amount of time it incentivizes them to make better law knowing they will have to return to living under whatever they pass.

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Exhibit A are the present economic policies. Only possible because every policy maker and national reporter is pretty immune to economic dislocation. The bold would remove that.

Because bribery is still legal, and it allows incumbents to become near invincible