Congress actually proposed something useful today. CCN Story here.
It has zero chance of getting the two-thirds vote needed for a constitutional amendment but it the single best idea for fixing the US political system. Their proposals calls for a limit of 3 congressional terms and 2 senatorial terms. It was proposed by Senators DeMint, Hutchinson, Coburn, and Brownback.
Career politicians are a horrible cancer on democracy. It is absolutely impossible for anyone to live at that intersection of special interests, money, and power without becoming biased and indebted to all kinds of groups. And once a politician has name recognition and milks his committee memberships for special interest money, he is almost invincible because of the money needed to overcome those advantages. Twelve years is plenty of time for a person to serve honorably and then get the hell out before they become slaves to the system. And from the special interest perspective, buying a politician might not be nearly so attractive if the investment would only have so many years worth of return on investment. People like Dodd who have been on the insurance and financial lobby payrolls for years might not be worth millions of dollars in campaign contributions any more. We don’t need limits on the money in campaigns, we need limits on the people in them.
The political argument for not having term limits is that the politicians supposedly become better informed on the issues and gain valuable experience performing the political work needed to pass legislation. That’s right. They say that what we’re seeing right now in the health care legislative process is a bright shining example of highly skilled and knowledgeable professional politicians doing their thing. Just think about how much worse it could be if they didn’t know what they are doing. HA! Amateur politicians might actually write some lines of legislation without angling for a special interest contribution, committee memberships, partisan advantages, or worrying about their next re-election. They might actually write some legislation because they think it would be good for the country. That would kind of make the US like, oh, what’s the word? Oh yes, a DEMOCRACY!