Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) have introduced a Constitutional amendment to place term limits on legislators.
Donald Trump mentioned imposing term-limits during his campaign. However, it will be a challenging fight for him. In 1995, the Supreme Court said that Congress can’t impose term limits by law, so that means it will have to be a Constitutional amendment. Cruz said this about it:
“The American people resoundingly agreed on Election Day, and President-elect Donald Trump has committed to putting government back to work for the American people. It is well past time to put an end to the cronyism and deceit that has transformed Washington into a graveyard of good intentions.”
He continued:
“… The time is now for Congress, with the overwhelming support of the American people, to submit this constitutional amendment to the states for speedy ratification. With control of a decisive majority of the states, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, we have a responsibility to answer the voters’ call-to-action. We must deliver.”
This amendment would allow Representatives to only serve three two-year terms and Senators to serve two six-year terms. DeSantis said that this would help in “reforming Capitol Hill.” The proposal would have to pass Congress and be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t seem to be on board with this. He said:
“We have term limits–they’re called elections.”
Constitutional amendments are particularly hard to pass. In 240 years, only 27 of them have passed. Many political scientists think that term limits are a bad idea. It makes the elections more competitive. Also, it doesn’t give the lawmakers enough time to learn enough to be able to deal with the complex issues they have to vote about. It takes a lot of time to learn enough on a particular subject.
Here is Trump talking about Congressional term limits:
https://youtu.be/hgfAdA20x5I
Featured image by Misha Popovikj via Flickr, available under CCA-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
