How would auto workers react if Ford, GM and the other car makers announced that all workers with 12 or more years on the job were being laid off immediately? And then all managers and executives with equal tenure also got the boot? Or if hospitals fired all doctors, nurses and technicians with more than a dozen years’ experience? Or if schools and colleges removed educators who began teaching before 2010? Or if airline pilots were similarly replaced by new recruits? And pro athletes forced to retire after three seasons?
What would that mean to consumer confidence, the quality of American products, health care, education, public safety and the championship games? It would be disastrous. And stupid.
Yet that is exactly what many, including President-elect Donald Trump, are proposing be done in the US Congress. He wants to limit the terms of the national legislature to “drain the swamp” and to “curb the rise of career politicians.”
Trump himself is term-limited by the 22d Amendment, though he often flirts with Congress creating an exemption for him. The job of Congress is not just to pass the laws but to make sure they are carried out by the executive branch, which outguns the legislators in numbers, funding, expertise and experience.
The legislature’s role in oversight is akin to quality control in a successful factory. It’s essential but can be especially challenging when the same party controls the Congress and the White House, as will be the case for the next two years.
Imposing term limits is essentially a presidential power grab. It weakens the Congress by effectively imposing a brain drain that puts taxpayers and their representatives at a disadvantage. It says forget about quality and merit. Fire them all, the good with the bad, the productive with the lazy, the conscientious with the crooks.
That’s not good management or good government.
Since setting term limits for Congress would require a Constitutional amendment, it’s Sen. Ted Cruz to the rescue. The Texas Republican firebrand last week introduced a proposed amendment setting three two-year terms for the House and two six-year terms for the Senate.
“Term limits are critical to fixing what’s wrong with Washington DC,” said Cruz. It’s hard to take him or his proposal seriously because if he really believes in it he wouldn’t have run for (and won) a third term last year.
Many aspiring members of Congress have proposed mandatory term limits, some even promising to voluntarily limit their service if elected, though extremely few have kept their commitment once they got to Washington and realized they were indispensable to the survival of the country.
I understand how Trump feels. Presidents traditionally resent Congress meddling in government, and they’re forever looking for ways to curtail congressional power. Trump has made a goal of his second term the concentration of greater power in the White House at the expense of Congress.
There already are too few lawmakers, especially newcomers, familiar with the Constitution’s separation of powers and too many who think they were sent to Washington to serve the President as leader of their party.
Trump's perspective
Trump, more than most, would like the Congress to be a rubber stamp doing just what he wants, and many on Capitol Hill are quite willing, starting with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Sens. Tommy Tuberville, Ron Johnson and Rick Scott, and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Jim Comer, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert. They may be loyally supporting their president but not their constituents, the Constitution or the job they were hired to do.
Blind obedience is not good government, regardless of party or presidents. The founding fathers thought a bit of competition would be healthy for the new republic and they wrote separation of powers into the Constitution. The first three articles were intended to make the three branches of government equal and independent, with each keeping an eye on the others.
TERM LIMITS are a non-partisan, non-ideological issue. It is about balancing the executive and legislative branches. (Term limits for the Supreme Court is a separate issue.) It is about oversight, especially when the party controlling one or both chambers of the Congress is not the one in the White House. It makes no difference which party controls which.
The Congress has the power of the purse, to levy taxes and approve spending. With that is the responsibility to make sure it is carried out properly. In other words, make sure the taxpayers are getting what they paid for.
Experienced members of Congress develop an intimate knowledge along with a different perspective of the issues facing the nation, enabling them to challenge the “experts” of the executive branch.
Forced retirement would mean losing lawmakers with valuable knowledge of the issues, the process and the system. In many cases, it would also mean losing staff with experience and valuable skills.
Some advocates of term limiting wrongly compare members of Congress to citizen-soldiers who take time off to serve their country and then return to their homes and jobs. Instead, the newly elected short-termers are very likely to begin looking toward their next career and how this temp job can profit them.
Weakening Congress through term limits strengthens those with the greater experience and expertise, namely the permanent bureaucracy in the Executive Branch as well as the special interest lobbyists, whose ranks already include many former lawmakers and would be sure to swell.
From the voter’s standpoint, term limits can be more of a curse than a blessing. There is always the opportunity to vote someone out of office who is not doing a good job.
But it makes no sense to give up the seniority, know-how and power of a veteran who is doing a good job representing their constituency or to sacrifice the known value of an incumbent, their clout and seniority just to take a chance on a challenger who offers nothing more concrete than promises of change for the sake of change.
Who wins with term limits? The president, the bureaucracy, and the special interests – not the voters.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and a former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.