With the recent slap down of Constitutional changes in Venezuela, I wanted to jump on the topic of term limits.
Way back when, Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented 4 elections to be the longest running US President in history.
With the passage of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, he will remain in that top spot forever, unless the Amendment is repealed.
That allows new ideas and new people a change to become President. It's generally looked upon as a good thing so that you do not slip into one person's view of how things should be run running the show.
However, those that hold the real power in the United States, members of Congress, do not have such term limits.
So let's take a look at why that is:
First off, any implementation of term limits must be approved by Congress, and let's face it, who's going to vote themselves out of a job? Especially one that wields this much power?
Secondly, you're going to continually have this power struggle between Democrats and Republicans. Which of course, doesn't get any work done.
For example, I think we all can agree that the federal deficit is running out of control. At a little more then $9 trillion dollars, sooner or later, we're going to have to start making tough decisions about what to do about it.
Now me personally, I think we should cut spending down to the bone in certain areas, and leave earmarks completely out of the question.
However, because term limits aren't there, you have prominent politicians who are playing word games with earmarks:
DREW GRIFFIN: ...Last week Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed a new open earmark process saying finally the American people will know where their money is going, and then she said this.
REP. NANCY PELOSI, (D) HOUSE SPEAKER: If I just might direct the record to another place, why don't we just leave this room today forgetting the word earmark? This is legislatively directed spending as opposed to executive spending.
GRIFFIN: And Ms. Pelosi, for the record, a member of your staff told us you would not reveal your "legislatively directed spending requests."
Yet, when Nancy was running for office, she said she'd be "happy to do away with" earmarks.
But yet, Nancy is giving earmarks to private companies:
Another of Pelosi's earmarks was $2.5 million to Bioquiddity, Inc., a San Francisco biotech company with nine employees, to continue developing drug-infusion pumps. Bioquiddity President Josh Kriesel, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the state legislature in 2002, has donated $6,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since last September. The company received a total of $3.9 million in earmarks in the last two years. Kriesel declined to comment directly on the earmarks.
Pelosi has said some earmarks are ``worthy.'' And she said there is a distinction between those for public projects, which she sometimes touts with press releases, and special interest earmarks.
Pelosi's Response
Asked about her company-specific earmarks, she says ``there are some things that the federal government wants that some of these companies can uniquely do.''
First off, that $3.9 million dollars could have been put towards paying off the national debt. Now many of you might be thinking "well that's nothing in the grand scheme of things", but that's just one earmark out of thousands. The last spending bill had $22 billion worth of earmarks. Plus, why is this money going towards private companies? Are you telling me that the federal government can't do the work that these companies are doing? These are private companies, does the government get a piece of the company for their money? Since they are private companies, they should be competing in the marketplace for their revenue. If they make a product that the government can uniquely use or decides that shouldn't be selling to other governments, then the company should be bought out or some similar type of transaction.
Let's get a better bang for our buck people.
However, if term limits were in place, we'd only have to endure Nancy Pelosi's shenanigans for so long.
So what's good for the goose, should be good for the gander. Term limits for members of Congress should be implemented and soon. And, to prevent people from voting themselves out of a job, let's offer to "grandfather" them in.
Current members of Congress can run for re-election for an unlimited amount of times. However, once they decide to not run for re-election or they retire, or die, then the next new member of Congress has the term limits imposed upon them.
Fair enough?
Travis
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