Give Us Liberty

Congressional Term Limits - An Absolute Necessity

JR Dieckmann

 

I was watching “Cashing In” on Fox News this morning when Jonathan Honig brought up the issue of excessive government spending and how it is linked to incumbent reelections in Congress. He made the very valid point that our budgetary and debt problems could all be solved by term limits on Congress. Then there would be no incentive for legislators to continue promising free stuff to get themselves reelected and they might then start working for the betterment of the nation instead of themselves.

I wondered why the Founders and crafters of the Constitution hadn’t considered this when they created the document. I decided to check the wordings in Article I, Sections 2 and 3 which establish the Congress. Here is what I found:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states...

 

Ok, that’s clear enough. The people shall elect House of Representative members every second year.

But look at the wording used for the election of Senators:

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years...
This wording was later changed (red text) by the 17th Amendment to read that Senators to be elected by the people instead of chosen by the state legislatures. Bad mistake, as I have written about before. But we’ll put that aside for now.
The real point here is that Article I, Section 3 specifically states that Senators shall be elected to serve “for 6 years.” By contrast, House members are to be “chosen every second year” but there is no limit on the number of years they may serve.
Now I suppose this can be interpreted any way you want to, but I have to wonder exactly what the founders had in mind here? Why did they elect to word the election of House members as being chosen “every second year,” while the election of Senators specifically states “for six years?”
One thing should be abundantly clear by now – our country is doomed to ruin if this problem of congressional term limits is not corrected. Career politicians in Congress are running this country into the ground to promote their own self interests and gain.
It’s the same with the American voters who are motivated to vote for unconstitutional free stuff. We can no longer trust the electorate to do the right thing at the ballot box and vote in the best interests of the country, rather than vote for what the government can do for them. The “free nation” concept of the Founding Fathers was for a country where citizens accept personal responsibility for themselves and their lives. The federal government would provide for those things that must be done, but cannot be done by the states or the people.
Government dependence, promoted by the left, has reached the breaking point and if it isn’t stopped in the next election it will be too late. Responsible tax paying Americans will be the minority at the poling place and the problem will only grow larger until our money becomes worthless and there will be no money to pay for those promises of government handouts. Riots and carnage will ensue.
We see this already happening with the promise of unaffordable government union pensions now putting cities into bankruptcy. The states will be next, and then the federal government. It is the inevitable outcome of a Ponzi scheme that is union pension plans and the realization of that is now becoming fact, as union retirees are finding out that their retirement pensions do not exist.
Obviously, the House and Senate members are not going to pass a law limiting their own privilege as lawmakers, so if this problem is ever going to be solved it will have to be done at the state level by a large majority of the states. It may require an amendment to the Constitution. But it is imperative that it be done. Congress had no problem applying term limits to the president. Isn’t it time that the same standard is applied to the Congress?
Is that, in fact, what the Founders intended in Article I, Section 3? It’s something to think about.
JR Dieckmann

"A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people." Grover Cleveland