In today’s political climate, we can say that people have mixed opinions about this topic. Right now, in the Senate 63% of Senate officials are over 65 years old, bringing the total number of Senate officials over 65 to 21 members (Quorum 2019). The question is raised now, are these members of our government representing us? According to Quorum Analytics, in 2019 the oldest member of the House is Representative Conyers (Democrat), he is 87 years old and represent Michigan. The average age of Michigan citizens in 2019 is 35, that is over half of the age of Rep. Conyers. This is quite an age difference and some of the other members of the house are just a couple of years off of Rep. Conyers. I believe and so many others around the US believe that the new Congress does not represent us as a country. They are too stuck in the past political agenda to see that our country is moving at an exponential rate, growing with the ever so growing economy, the changing way our country works and thinks, and just seems to have trouble keeping up with the modern era of voters that are in this country right. I believe that all members of the House should have up to 3 terms and are limited to those 3 terms which results in 2 years per term. Senate should have up to 2 terms in their tenure in the government, which results into 12 years total in those 2 terms (6 years per term). This will not only be beneficial for the government and the people of the United States also. This will help keep government officials more inclined with their voters and bringing legislation to the forefront of today’s issues instead of reverting back to legislation that would have only worked many years ago, also it will keep our government young and fresh.
Well, to be perfectly fair we have to look all the way back to the time where the constitution was constructed and approved in 1887, on a hot summer day the constitution was written by the members of the Senate. Of course, those members did not want to add a term limit and it was not spoken of because they thought they knew what was best for the country at the time. How could anyone blame them for the pathway they laid out for us anyways? We are doing a really great job with the modern constitution with the changes that had to me made in order for the country to function up to date. Almost like a computer update, sometimes if the old update is doing fine, we are going to keep it on that version until something monumentally goes wrong, and some of us like new updates and changes right away. Either way though, the citizens of the United States have been brought up and actually brought into law in 1639 with the Fundamental Orders of 1639. The colony’s governor was prohibited from serving consecutive terms of only one year, and stating that “no person be chosen governor above once in two years” After independence, Pennsylvania’s Constitution of 1776 limited members of the state’s General Assembly from serving more than “four years in seven”. At the federal level, the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781, set term limits for delegates to the Continental Congress – the equivalent of the modern Congress – mandating that “no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years”. Even in a short time period of 1990-1995 23 states had term limits but in the Supreme Court case of U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton. It ruled out the 23 states having any sort of constitutional power to enact term limits on their states.
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The Founding Father considered and closed the idea of term limits for Congress. In Federalist Papers No. 53, James Madison, Father of the Constitution, explained why the Constitutional Convention of 1787 rejected term limits.
“A few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them”, wrote Madison (Longley, 2019).
In today’s terms, this means that old members of Congress could be more beneficial to the country than newer congressional members for whatever reason and could collapse under the pressure of the swiftly changing opinions of the American people. I have laid out the background of the term limits and how long it has been a hot debate topic for quite some time, and how the Founding Fathers looked down on this issue. How would term limits be beneficial and how it would affect the United States political culture today?
Including keeping the government fresh and full of ideas, there is a lot that can be beneficial pushing term limits on congressional members. Introducing term limits could wash out the corrupt members of Congress and the toxic ideas they bring to us Americans. Imposing term limits could eliminate the number of members pushing legislation for their own self-interest and not batting an eye from the cries of the public. Also, another good idea that could grow from term limits is the idea that Congress, like any other congressional position is not a normal every day job. These positions were put into our constitution so the normal, everyday Americans like yourself and I, could have a voice in how the government handles certain issues of the American People. This same exact thing happened to spark the American Revolution. England had a King across the world trying to tell us how to manage our lives. How does a congressional member expect to tell us what legislation is right for us without listening to us? Living inside a stone building, making money from fundraisers and their supports, and taking money from companies that support one wing or the other does not sound beneficial to me at all. Term limits could force the members of Congress to listen to their particular state or district to make decisions in the best interest of the community and not for themselves.
Other than benefits of the term limits, some downfalls can turn up after righting the legislation to put term limits in the Constitution. One of those downfalls are restricting the right to vote from all American voters. Some voters love their members of Congress and want to keep them in office as long as possible. These members could have been very beneficial to the community in any way they worked, but the problem with this argument is, people could be blind to new ideas and new ways of how a new member of Congress could be beneficial to them. The bias shows in voting (ex. Michigan has always been a democratic stronghold, some voters could have been bias towards the left wing of politics and failed to see how a republican representative of their state could help with certain legislation for their state). The bias comes in forms of democratic and republican voting. This can only harm a state and keep them blinded of how new and fresh blood from either party could help them as a community.
Another key argument that coincides with the first argument, could be that experience is valuable. At any job, an employer will choose someone who has credentials filling all the boxes at their job site. Also, experience is invaluable to politics and how the government works, if we get some regular joe from the street with no political experience at all, it could shake the core of the state and put the community in worse shape than what it was left in. The counter to this argument is that no one can be counted out to do a job better than the next guy in any congressional position. I have seen Michigan go down a dark road with lifelong politicians and have seen other states thrive with new faces popping up in government, these new faces could sprout new ideas and a new way of thinking about how the world works in the eyes of the community. I would rather have a man or a woman that has been put in the shoes of the community, rather than a rich congressman trying to tell me what is better for us. Nobody knows yourself better than yourself.
Lastly, we have to come up with a way to bring this to the forefront of the modern congressman. Sadly, the constitution was written so that no major legislation could pass without a two-thirds vote of the countries’ politicians. This means that even if a congressman has the same idea as the citizens of the United States, it would be nearly impossible to pass something so beneficial for this great country. We cannot have a constitutional convention unless we rewrite the whole constitution and make it fit to the modern ways of how the brains of the citizens’ tick. Which is why we need to take it to our local officials and write a legislation or just the congress to take a look at the possibility of term limits. I do not want a 65+ year old official trying to tell me what is beneficial for my life, when in reality, he has not done a damn thing to help my life out at all. I proposed a two-term limit for Senate officials which results in 12 years total and a 3-term limit for Representative of States with results in 6 years totals through those 3 terms. I sit here right now and cannot think of a solution, besides going through our representatives so we can have a voice in today’s issues. Knowing damn well that this issue will not get brought up in the near future unless enough of us bring it to the government desks so they can debate on this topic of making our country a better place.
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