Term Limits for Congress: Fixing Campaign Finance

Campaign Finance Reform has been on the table as an issue for at least a decade. McCain-Feingold created some regulation, more transparency measures took hold in congress after the fall of Jack Abramoff.

The measures made to make an honest institution out of our current congress all miss the mark and all for the same reason. They miss the reason why congress members need all this fund raising in the first place. The reason? They are in a perpetual state of trying to get reelected.

For a lobbyist, or a corporation, nothing makes you sleep more soundly at night than knowing you will have a friend in congress for decades taking care of the legislation you need, or blocking the legislation you hate forever and ever, and only for a tiny sum every election cycle.

What if that same lobbyist had to worry that every term a new Senator or Representative was coming along? At the very least it would end the kind of long term relationships that we hear about now. Congressional offices wouldn't be swarming with lobbyists because the short term nature of the appointment to congress would entice the members to legislate their passions and not do favors to get reelected and again and again.

Term Limits for Congress: The Citizen Legislature

I listened to the podcast of ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He interviewed Senator Chuck Hagel who will be leaving the Senate this year and does not plan to run for reelection. When asked what he planned on doing the next year he half-joked (and I'm paraphrasing), "its a well known fact that senators have no real skill sets."

That half truth strikes at the heart of one of our biggest problems in congress today. The people of the United States Congress are by and large, career politicans. They rose through the ranks of the political system and emerged to fill their slot in a congressional district or as a senator. Once they find that place, it becomes remarkably easy to hold that position, because in general while the country thinks that congress overall stinks, it always seems their guy is OK.

And so what you get is not a congress made of of citizens who have been dealing with the problems of industry, the economy, our defense, or any of the other issues of the day. You get a congress made up of those who wanted to be little more than members of congress.

Consider for a moment the men that made up the constitutional convention. Most of them were not career politicians. They were instead farmers, traders, land owners, lawyers and doctors, they were the technocrats of their day. They brought together their searing intellects and varied philosophies to form the basis of our government. After serving their time, they went back to their professional lives, having fought for their intellectual passions.

Imagine today, if you will, that Steve Jobs took 8 years away from running Apple to be a Senator from California, or that Warren Buffet wielded his intellect around the halls of Congress for a term or two. What about Paul Allen or Michael Dell? Take a look at the Forbes top 400 and you'll find 20 names you'd like to see walking the halls of congress guiding our policy decisions. Then there is other side, what about the main street business owner, the guy that owns a Starbucks in Boston, or the woman who started her own company in Iowa. What about the farmer in Kansas. Knowing in advance that serving in the congress would be temporary would give someone with a real life access to the system. But instead Congress is filled with people that will stay for decades, stale on ideas and out of touch with the citizenry they are meant to represent. Congress was meant to be made up of members that reflected their citizens, not be a class unto themselves.

Term limits will infuse the system with a balance and flow it has lacked for a century.

I thought no one was interested?

As a twenty-something, I grew up being told one thing...no one really cares about politics. I grew up being told by almost everyone that politics was dirty business and that only insiders and idealogues really cared about it. I didn't feel that way mind you. I was just told that, I was told it was especially true of younger people who were largely just getting dumber and who cared less and less about the people around them. Bill Clinton and Pappy Bush begged for voter turn out between mud-slinging sessions. MTV started rock the vote when I was too young to rock.

What this election has proven is that people are interested when real change is needed and desired across the electorate. George W. Bush will be remembered as one of the worst presidents in our history, but he did leave on gift as he bumbles out the door, a national electorate so sick and tired of idiocy in the White House that the country is fired up to change. So what should we do with this energy besides study the issues and make intelligent voting choices?

We need to fight for something else. Term limits for Congress. People write theses on this subject. I ardently believe term limits will fix congress. So I am planning 4 more posts on the topic. They will cover the following things term limits in congress will accomplish:

Citizen Legislature
Fixes Campaign Finance
Gets the Electorate involved cycle after cycle
Fulfills the founders' vision

So stay tuned for more.