Every time Congress commits some new outrage, I mean bigger than their average weekly outrages, the cry goes out far and wide for term limits. This has been going on unsuccessfully for decades. Such movements come and go and rarely gain any momentum.
Why?
Well, there are a variety of answers. The most common is the incumbent advantage: people tend to stick with a known quantity and so will vote for even a bad incumbent over a total unknown. Incumbents also have massive fundraising advantages. Truth is, there isn’t just one right answer. There are a lot of reasons an incumbent gets re-elected.
There’s an elephant in the room, of course. People also vote to retain good representatives, exactly as the Founders intended. If Bob is doing a good job, why shouldn’t the folks he represents be allowed to keep voting him back in? This is where term limit movements hit the side of a mountain. There’s no good answer to that in a democratic republic. As long as the people are fulfilling their roles as the watchdog, there’s no reason they can’t keep sending the same guy to Congress.
But what are the constituents considering when determining if Bob has done a good job? Mostly two things out of a myriad of possibilities: Bob voted the way they wanted him to on issues important to them and Bob brought home the pork.
Oh yes, pork barrel politics are alive and well. Defense contracts look like crazy quilts as parts are farmed out across the country to please various congressmen and their constituents. People are all for cutting waste until it means that their state doesn’t get a piece of the newfangled whatsis that would be far more efficient to produce in just one state but gets produced in twelve so every state gets its cut.
Defense is just an easy example. This stuff happens constantly. NASA is all over the map. Which makes sense for the NOAA (National Weather Service) since weather has a habit of changing from one state to another but seriously, was flying the shuttle cross country on the back of a jumbo jet really the most efficient way for NASA to operate? Why launch from Florida to land in California? It wasn’t, which was why it was changed. Eventually.
Don’t just look at those other greedy states. Everyone has a hand in this. We all want jobs brought to our state and a new library and some interstate exchanges and – well, you get the picture.
Here’s the real reason term limits never get any traction: people are perfectly aware that the greater their congressman’s seniority the more goodies he can bring home. So unless he gets caught in a major scandal or does something really stupid, he’s got a really good shot of being reelected his second go around. And his reelection chances just go up from there. Whole careers in Congress decades long because Bob and his kin have enough clout to bring home ever more bacon.
Better reason for term limits, you say? Maybe, but probably not. Term limits either have to be draconian or incumbents will just start bouncing between the two houses. Congress is stupid enough without that kind of added confusion. And hard, draconian limits hurt the guys that really are trying to do a good job for their constituents – especially if they were sent to Congress on a particularly difficult issue. It may take several terms to talk colleagues into the kind of change your constituents want.
There’s an easier, fairer solution. A constitutional amendment to end seniority in both Houses. Seniority hurts the newly elected and punishes states for not reelecting their incumbents, no matter how incompetent they were. Why should Rhode Island have a better shot at a seat on Ways and Means than New Mexico? Just because Jim Langevin was first elected in 2001 while Tom Udall was first elected in 2009? Why should their election dates matter when they are supposed to be representing their states?
It shouldn’t.
Why does changing it require a constitutional amendment? Because the Constitution grants the power to set its own rules to each House of Congress. The results are cures for insomnia – the House Rules and Manual is an incredible 700 pages – download it yourself if you like and the Rules of the Senate are just as mind numbing with 44 sections, numbered in Roman numerals. Seriously, it takes fewer instructions to build a rocket.
The only way to remove that power from the Congress is by amending the Constitution. Don’t get carried away – we don’t need a fifty page Constitution telling Congress how to run its business. We just need to eliminate seniority so that each Congressman or woman starts on equal footing with all the others. No state should be ‘more equal’ just because they reelect someone. All we want to do is insure the equality of the states in Congress.
Which is what eliminating seniority would do. It will also create an initial mess as Congress sorts out how it is going to handle committee assignments. But that is exactly what we pay them to do. it’s okay if it gets a little messy. They have to live with it so they have the incentive to fix the mess. This is a feature, not a bug.
Eliminating seniority won’t magically make Congress all better. I don’t think Tinkerbell has anywhere near that much fairy dust. But it will put the states on an equal footing and stop incentivizing constituents to vote for the same old nitwit just because their grandparents did forty years ago.
If Bob does a good job, fine, send him back as often as you like. But states shouldn’t be electing representatives just because they have gained seniority. With the seniority system gone, Bob will have to work a LOT harder for the folks back home if he wants to return to office next term.
And that’s exactly how it should be.
