Category: term limits

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Nineteen Seconds and Counting

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

We witnessed the epitome of uber-experienced Washington, last week, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) froze mid-sentence during a press briefing, unable to utter a sound or make any movement for a seemingly interminable 19 seconds. 

The Republican leader, 81 years of age, the last 38 spent in the United States Senate, was eventually rescued by fellow Republican senators, led away from the microphones.

McConnell has plenty of company in Washington. There’s our doddering octogenarian president. And in Congress, incumbency leads to longevity, which leads to old age. The Senate, Newsmax notes, now “has the highest median age in U.S. history at 65.”

Americans were treated to another gerontocratic spectacle with 90-year-old Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), appearing confused at a committee hearing, and being told to vote “aye.” 

And sheepishly complying. 

I started to write, “If this is what experience leads to . . .” but there is no need for the “if.” It is.

And grist for a million memes. “Family Torn Between Placing Grandpa In Hospice,” runs a Babylon Bee headline, “And Having Him Run For Senate.”

Funny, sure. But this problem isn’t. Getting old isn’t always pretty. And even career politicians such as McConnell and Feinstein deserve better.

So do ‘We, the People’! 

Term limits would solve the problem and be better than age limits. Both are popular — 75 percent favor age limits, while over 80 percent want term limits. But with Congress having dodged the congressional term limits enacted in 24 states back in the 1990s, citizens in North Dakota, with help from U.S. Term Limits, have launched a ballot initiative for 2024 to place an age limit of 80 on their federal representatives.

Three decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly struck down state-imposed term limits, 5-4. Today, what will the High Court determine on age limits?

Inquiring minds want to know. And I really love the movement’s relentless agitation!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Term Limits for Thee

Nancy Pelosi, term limits, gerontocracy

Last Sunday, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now with her own MSNBC program, asked Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) about packing the Supreme Court. 

Rep. Pelosi’s response was, shall we say, telling.

“It’s been over 150 years since we’ve had an expansion of the court,” Pelosi said. “It was in the time of Lincoln that it went up to nine. So the subject of whether that should happen is a discussion. It’s not, say, a rallying cry. But it’s a discussion.”

Ms. Psaki also asked about term limits for the justices, and Nancy eagerly endorsed the idea, insisting there “certainly should be term limits. There certainly should be and if nothing else, there should be some ethical rules that would be followed.”

Justices aren’t getting as rich as congressmen . . . but still.

“I had one justice tell me he thought the other justices were people of integrity, like a Clarence Thomas,” Pelosi went on. “I’m like, get out of here.”

This plays as comedy off the MSNBC channel, of course. Nancy Pelosi, introduced by Psaki as being in Congress for a long, long time (“first elected to the House when Roe v. Wade had been the law of the land for 14 years”) is herself a fit poster ch — er, octogenarian — for establishing legislative term limits. Highlighting the High Court’s dip in popularity, Pelosi scoffed that the 30 percent approval “seemed high.” Of course, congressional approval is ten percentage points lower, and has been consistently. 

Limits to power is something that applies to others, not oneself, I guess.

With permanent leaches at the teat of the State lingering year after year in office, like Pelosi, our attitude should be, like, get out of here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Do Anything

term limits

How far will officeholders go to kill term limits?

Around the country, so-called representatives have repealed state legislative term limits enacted as statutes rather than constitutional amendments; gone to court to get term limits outlawed; and even, in one or two instances, ignored term limits on themselves until forced to step aside by judicial action.

I bet that even if voters enact a term limits law with a provision specifically prohibiting legislators from sending a question to the ballot to weaken or repeal voter-enacted term limits, such a prohibition would not stop lawmakers from proposing just such measures.

Well, it’s time for me to collect on the bet.

In the current legislative session, North Dakota State Representative Jim Kasper submitted a resolution, HCR 3019, to ask North Dakotans to weaken legislative term limits they’d passed just five months ago, last November. Kasper wants a limit of 12 consecutive years in a chamber instead of a lifetime limit of eight years.

What a shocker! He’d like to stay in power longer.

The law voters passed months ago states that the legislature “shall not have authority to propose an amendment to this constitution to alter or repeal” the term limits. This ability is instead “reserved to initiative petition of the people.”

It seems so clear.

Nevertheless, Kasper’s unconstitutional constitutional amendment barreled ahead in the North Dakota legislature until finally expiring in the senate just days ago.

Perhaps the new law should have included something about tarring and feathering lawmakers who try to ignore the ban on acting to undermine their term limits?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Citizen Initiatives, term limits, North Dakota

North Dakota state representatives (and I use that term loosely) are unhappy. 

Very unhappy.

They have no use for the Ethics Commission that voters established back in 2018 by passing a constitutional amendment initiated by citizen petition. State legislators reacted by trying to — ahem — “fix” the horse the ethics measure “rode in on.” 

That is, wreck the state’s ballot initiative process, to prevent citizens from making such reforms happen . . . without any “help” from politicians.

Legislators placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot to require that any citizen-initiated amendment be approved not merely by North Dakota voters, but then by both chambers of the state legislature. Their amendment, amid uproar, was finally amended so that if legislators voted the initiative down, voters would get a second vote on it. 

Still, 62 percent of voters said, “No, thanks!”

Then, in 2022, the state Chamber of Commerce and other special interests attempted to use the citizen petition process, which they always say is way too easy. Yet, these insiders failed to gather enough signatures to qualify their measure requiring a 60 percent supermajority to pass an initiative. 

Meanwhile, term limits supporters gathered enough signatures* and, last November, North Dakotans said, “Yes!” 

Seems politicians in Bismarck, the state capital, are even less fond of term limits. They’ve introduced a raft of bills designed to kill the citizen petition process:

  • House Bill 1452 would slap a 90 percent tax on contributions to ballot measures by any American living outside North Dakota. 
  • House Bill 1230 would fine a campaign committee $10,000 and each of committee member $1,000 each if the petitions they turn in fail to have enough valid signatures to qualify the initiative.
  • Senate Concurrent Resolution 4013 would amend the state constitution to (a) require 25 percent more voter signatures, (b) outlaw any payment to signature gatherers (something the U.S. Supreme Court has already unanimously ruled state governments cannot do), (c) block new residents from petitioning in the state for in some cases over a year, and (d) mandate a 67 percent vote to pass a citizen-initiated ballot measure.  

North Dakota legislators prove the case for term limits. And the horse it rode in on: citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Though term limits supporters had to fight the 30-year incumbent Secretary of State’s attempt to block the petition all the way to the state’s highest court, which ruled unanimously to place term limits before the voters.

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Hypocrisy Not at Issue

Ted Cruz, term limits

“I’ve never said I’m going to unilaterally comply,” Senator Ted Cruz told Face the Nation.

The Texan Republican was talking about term limits. On January 23, he and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to impose term limits on Congress.*

But he was also addressing a complaint.

“Ted Cruz wants two-term limit for senators – and a third term for himself,” ran the headline in The Guardian; “Ted Cruz Confronted on Seeking 3rd Term Despite Pushing for 2 Term Limit” was the story on MSN. “Why aren’t you holding yourself to that standard?” asked Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. The insinuation is inconsistency, hypocrisy.

Yet, the senator’s run for a third term isn’t either of those things.

Term limits make sense as a systemic fix. As a strategy for any one voter or any one politician, it’s another matter. 

Why does so much of the media fail to understand this difference?

Simple: They don’t like term limits. Period. 

They envision a big government run by career politicians and reported on by expert journalists while we little people lap up their narratives, keep quiet, and pay the bills. 

Who wins, after all, if those who seek to make government more responsive and responsible through reforms such as term limits cede the congressional arena to the Washington insider incumbency, which stays and stays term after term?

Devoid of any rational argument that could sour Americans on the term limits that four of five of us love, the press plays this phony “hypocrisy” game.

Ted Cruz sees through it. He not only understands the advantages of term limits, but also knows that applying them to himself alone makes no sense for his career or for the term limits movement.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* The amendment would limit senators to two six-year terms and members of the House to three two-year terms after the date of its enactment.

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Political Babes

Robert Dover , Nebraska, term limits

Robert Dover is a freshman state senator in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature, appointed last year by the governor to fill a vacancy. Dover says that learning the ropes at the capitol has been like “drinking from a fire hose.”

I sure hope he’s found the bathrooms. 

But have no fear: This rookie has already overcome that lack of experience, sponsoring a constitutional amendment, which faster than a Nebraska minute has 40 of 49 state senators enthusiastically signed on. 

What has folks at the capitol so excited? His amendment, LR22CA, would dramatically weaken their current term limit by giving legislators an extra term, so they can serve 12 years, before taking a break, and not be limited to just eight.

“Dover,” the Nebraska Examiner informs, “said he quickly learned how term limits were a bad idea after talking with legislative veterans, state agency heads and lobbyists.”

“Everyone I talked to said it was a horrible thing,” he offered. “To a person, they said (term limits) took away from the consistency at the Capitol.”

By which he means, the senator elaborated — and as the Lincoln Journal Star reports — maintaining “the right relationships between senators or interest groups to strike compromise.” 

Yes, indeed: the longer politicians stay in office the more they do “compromise” with special interests. 

“Dover said he understands term limits ‘are very popular’ among the electorate,” the Journal Star noted. Apparently, he just doesn’t get that those are the folks he is supposed to work for. 

The senator complained that Liberty Initiative Fund, my organization, is sending postcards to voters across the state to inform them about his bill, calling our effort “a waste of money.”

That tells me it is money well spent. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Term limits have a long history of battling the political establishment in the Cornhusker State, which I wrote about back in 2011.

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