INTRO MUSIC : “Cars” by Gary Numan
Philip Blumel: Rest in peace, Lee Iacocca. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the term limits movement, for the week of July 8th, 2019.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: We all know that Lee Iacocca was the American automobile executive responsible for the development of the Ford Mustang while at the Ford Motor Company in the 1960s, and then later for steering the Chrysler Corporation away from the rocks as its CEO during the 1980s. But what you might not remember is that Lee Iacocca was a vocal supporter of congressional term limits. Quote, “Congress has slowly built a moat around Capitol Hill and isolated itself from those who might want some change,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1990. He went on, “Congress has become, for all practical purposes, a lifetime job. The whole idea of holding national elections every two years was to give a chance to throw the rascals out if we didn’t like the job they were doing. But today the rascals have made themselves invincible. Democracy lives on change or at least on the opportunity for change. And that’s almost impossible today unless we first change the rules.”
Philip Blumel: (singing)
Philip Blumel: He was right. It’s a shame he did not live long enough to see it happen. We’re still enjoying the fallout of the U.S. Senate hearings on congressional term limits held last month. Before his testimony before a judiciary subcommittee, U.S. Term Limits Executive Director Nick Tomboulides spent an hour on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program debating term limits with Casey Burgat of the R Street Institute. It was a worthy bout, but the most interesting part were the phone calls from viewers, which we’ll sample throughout this episode.
Speaker 3: Connor, out of Greenbelt, Maryland. Good morning.
Connor: Good morning. Yes, I support the idea of term limits. I think that an idea in congress can be that, why solve a problem when you can just run on the issue indefinitely. But I wonder if both guests could maybe comment on what they think fixing gerrymandering would do to this issue. I’ve heard Arnold Schwarzenegger talk about steps he took in California, and it seems like those steps helped to make seats much more competitive and it maybe took away the need to have term limits. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Tomboulides.
Nick Tomboulides: 98% of incumbents are reelected every two years, but when you dig a little bit deeper, what you realize is that our country actually has an epidemic of uncompetitive elections. Every two years for Congress, over 80% of incumbents running for reelection are either totally unopposed or they’re under opposed, meaning that they’re running for election, but they’ve got an opponent who’s not running a serious campaign, and the incumbents cake walk back into those districts. Again, we’ve got 10% of congressional elections on average that are unopposed every two years.
Nick Tomboulides: How do you vote your incumbent out when there’s nobody else on the ballot? I live in Florida. Before we passed term limits in Florida, we had election cycles in which more than half of all the elections in Florida were just canceled because the incumbents were too powerful and nobody was willing to challenge them. So the power of incumbency has a chilling effect on people who would otherwise run. You talk about money in politics. A big reason for it is that incumbents can raise $9 from PACs for every $1 that a challenger can raise. In theory, we might have elections, but in reality the deck is stacked and incumbents are doing it.
Speaker 3: Patrick, go ahead.
Patrick: Hi. My question for Nick is, you seem to offer term limits as this kind of silver bullet for the partisanship and disconnect that Americans feel from their Congress. Why is it specifically term limits that can resolve this problem that Americans feel?
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. Well, we’re not actually saying term limits is a silver bullet per se, but it is a huge part of the reform that needs to be done to make Washington work again and to fix this broken system. One reason we’re so enthusiastic about term limits is because it has worked very, very well at the state level. There are 15 state legislatures with term limits, and the data show that those states have more competitive elections. They have lower barriers to entry, so more people from all walks of life are able to run for office. We have data on how states are performing in terms of fiscal health, and the states with term limits on average have a better ranking of fiscal health than the states run by career politicians. So the rookies are not driving these states into the ground. In fact, they’re doing a much better job because they know they have a fixed time horizon to get the job done, change the system before it changes them and then return home to live under the laws that they made.
Nick Tomboulides: I will tell you one thing about lobbyists. We have run hundreds of term limits campaigns all over the country, every level of government, city, county, state, you name it. And in every single one of those campaigns, the lobbyists and the special interests that they represent, contribute exclusively to whichever side is trying to prevent, weaken or abolish term limits. So if you follow the money, you see lobbyists are no fans of term limits. They don’t like when term limits sever their relationships they have with incumbents. Jack Abramoff even said as much. He said, “A politician who stays in office for life and is a friend, is worth his weight in gold to a lobbyist.”
Scott Tillman: Hello, this is Scott Tillman, the National Field Director with U.S. Term Limits. On June 17th, Nick Tomboulides testified about congressional term limits in Washington DC. Following his testimony, both Democrats and Republicans are adding their names as cosponsors. Eight new co-sponsors since June 17th. Mo Brooks from Alabama, Russ Fulcher from Idaho, Scott Perry from Pennsylvania, Steve Chabot from Ohio, Joe Cunningham from South Carolina. Lori Trahan from Massachusetts, Ron Wright from Texas, and James Comer from Kentucky. Please contact your representative and ask them to sign our pledge and cosponsor HGR-20. Pledges are available at termlimits.com.
Philip Blumel: Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, elected in 2014, is a signer of the U.S. Term Limits Congressional Pledge, and has lived up to it by co-sponsoring SJR-1, the U.S. Term Limits Amendment bill. As a member of the judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, he was able to participate in the historic hearings on congressional term limits held last month on Capitol Hill.
Ben Sasse: I think Mr. Smith goes to Washington would have been an incredibly crappy movie if Jimmy Stewart had stayed around for a hundred years, cozied up to K Street and then absolutely everything conceivably possible to keep his job here. And yet there’s no way you can tell the really important story about someone coming to fight for something if one of the main inputs to the way they think about the question is, is this going to be popular 12 months or 18 or 24 months from now as opposed to, is this the right thing to do for my kids and my constituents, kids and grandkids? We need a lot more long-term thinking around here. Not short-term finger in the wind-ism. And if we’re going to do that, if you’re going to drain the swamp, you have to drive a whole bunch of people who are the swamp protectors out of the swamp to go back home.
Ben Sasse: And what we have right now is a whole bunch of people who get elected and decide it’s a one way ticket. People are from where they’re from. They run for office, and then once they get to Washington, they buy a permanent home and they eventually stop visiting the home they came from, and they start to have a calculus that staying in Washington forever is a key part of defining their identity and their service. And I think it’s pretty obvious that one of the reasons we never tackle entitlement reform around here is because it’s obviously the right long-term thing to do and in the short term it’s going to be really messy to admit the truth that politicians haven’t told the truth about the long-term budget, and we’ve regularly over-promised. And when you come clean with the American people about that, there’s going to be a whole bunch of blood on the floor at first.
Speaker 3: John, he’s been waiting in Louisiana. Supports term limits. Go ahead, John.
John: So yeah, I support them. I’m glad to see the gentleman mentioned the Convention of the States, because I think that’s the only way the article five that we’re going to get it because there’s no way the legislatures are going to vote themselves term limits. And I approve of that. I think, I don’t worry about the Constitution being unnecessarily amended because of the three quarters requirement by the state. That’s the way it was built. The other thing I oppose, believe it or not, is the 17th Amendment. I think the Senate should go back to be the governor’s house as opposed to the people’s house.
Speaker 3: Any of you gentlemen have thoughts on the 17th Amendment?
Nick Tomboulides: Not particularly, but I will mention something that came to mind while he was speaking about that. The 17th Amendment, whether you agree with it or not, is actually good precedent for how to get an amendment passed, because if the convention organizing at the state level was actually the genesis of that amendment. At the time it was proposed by Congress, about 30 states had issued applications asking for a convention to debate that subject. Congress saw the writing on the wall and then they proposed the amendment on themselves. So my only takeaway from that is maybe we can borrow that strategy to get a term limits amendment.
Speaker 3: How close do you think we are to Congress seeing the writing on the wall on term limits?
Nick Tomboulides: Oh, I think we’re getting closer every day. Frustration with Congress is at an all-time high. They’re going to have to do something to mollify it and to bring back confidence in this institution. I think American people have lost confidence in Congress. We feel like our politicians overpromise and under-deliver on every single issue. I can’t think of a major problem Congress has solved in the last 30 years. And so something is eventually going to have to give, and term limits would go a long way toward convincing people that Congress belongs to the people again.
Speaker 3: Nat’s on that line for those who oppose, out of Baltimore, Maryland. Good morning.
Nat: Good morning. Thanks for C-SPAN. Whereas I support everything that these two gentlemen are saying, I’d like to… I’ve dealt with Congress for 50 years. And what I found is that even when the congressman or the senator changes, the staff doesn’t. So there’s a secondary problem that I wish you people would consider.
Speaker 3: Nat, thanks for bringing that up. Nick Tomboulides, should there be term limits on congressional staff?
Nick Tomboulides: It’s certainly something that I would favor, but I don’t think it needs to come along for the ride if you’re going to do term limits for Congress. This is actually one of the most popular myths out there about term limits that if you do it, it’s somehow going to empower staff. Gallup took a poll and 85% of congressional staff said that they were against term limits. I think that pretty much settles the question right there as to whether they would get more influence. What makes a staffer in Washington more powerful is typically that they work under the protection of a very senior member of Congress. If that member of Congress is termed out or has to retire, the staff will diminish in value. In fact, when California passed term limits, the staff turnover on committees increased by about 50% in the 1990s. And you also have a big problem with staff in the revolving door here in Washington, D.C., where a staffer will leave the senator’s office and then go become a lobbyist and lobby their own boss.
Nick Tomboulides: Term limits would also address that because if you term limit out the old boss, then you’re instantly devaluing that Rolodex when the person goes over to K street and tries to become a lobbyist. There was one study done on this that found the amount of money that you can earn as a lobbyist on K Street drops by about 25% when your old employer, the senator, retires.
Philip Blumel: Barack Obama famously advocated term limits both in the United States and across the world. But in this poignant March clip from Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, the former first lady shares how fame and fortune changes one’s relationship with fellow citizens over time.
Michelle Obama: What Barack and I talk about that we do miss is, and you will understand this, is the loss of anonymity. And that’s something that most people don’t understand, how valuable anonymity is. Being able to blend into your environment and not be the center of it, but just to observe it. Because that’s really where… and because I love people so much. I love casual conversations with people. I loved, while I love my time in the car alone in Chipotle, I loved also what you learn standing in a grocery store line and overhearing someone’s conversation.
Conan O’Brien: Right.
Michelle Obama: Watching their interactions with their loved one, and not being the watch-ee, but watching. And taking that in and understanding life and the observations that come. Most of your interaction with your partner is about what you saw, what you experienced over the course of the day. For Barack and I, that’s still very limited because we’re not able to be exposed in an anonymous way. Just watching people live their lives.
Conan O’Brien: Right.
Michelle Obama: And we’re always watched at this stage. And both Barack and I, what you learn about the world comes from that. Which is why, another reason why, I wouldn’t run. I don’t live a normal life. I used to, and I am a very… Normal is baked into me because of how I was raised. But I also know the life I’ve lived for the last 10 years is no longer normal. And so I don’t know as much as I would want to, to be in a position of leadership. To kind of know what are you feeling? Because you can’t experience life behind a tinted window in a car. So we sacrificed that and that’s not a complaint, but if I’m going to be a leader, I got to be in there.
Michelle Obama: I got to be able to be in there, overhearing people’s truths and really being able to see their pain without it being filtered through the veil of me. And that’s why I think it’s… Eight years is enough. It is enough. It’s time for new ideas and people who’ve been in the Chipotle line, and people who are struggling in ways that we just, because of the nature of what we’ve done, we don’t do that anymore.
Conan O’Brien: Right.
Michelle Obama: We need fresh, real clear eyes in this stuff.
Linda: And I happen to have a very good Congress person, and I don’t know what other profession we will want to send people where we punish them for doing good work.
Speaker 3: Linda, who’s your member?
Linda: … as a host. Rosa DeLauro. And that lady work. She works with the people, and you want to call her a professional politician? You can do that. But let me tell you something, she serves the people.
Speaker 3: Linda, thanks for the call from Connecticut this morning. Nick Tomboulides, to that point. She doesn’t want to throw out her member of Congress.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. Well, if you, Linda, want to keep your member of Congress in power for life, then it sounds like you’re not a term limit supporter, and that’s okay. We have disagreements on this issue. You probably agree with about 10% of Americans who don’t think we need term limits on Congress. But I’ll tell you why the 82% of Americans who want term limits support it so much. It’s because we want the ability to reelect our own congressman for a little while, but we don’t want them to become so out of touch that they lose their connection with their constituents.
Nick Tomboulides: So it’s very important to maintain this tie between a member of Congress and their constituents. And by the way, term limits, like I said, not an unusual idea. We already term limit the presidency. There are folks in our country who have a great affinity for either President Obama or President Trump, and yet you don’t hear these people saying, “Let’s repeal presidential term limits,” because they understand that it’s healthy for our republic. And I would suggest that the same is true for Congress. There may be… There are definitely some good members of Congress, but I think they are more than outweighed by members of Congress who are responding to the wrong incentives. The incentive to stay in power, rather than do what’s right.
Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for our podcast again this week. We appreciate the comments we’re getting about No Uncertain Terms at podcast@termlimits.com. Please keep them coming. Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to go to the iTunes Store on your computer, iPad, or iPhone, and search for the No Uncertain Terms podcast. Once you find it, rate it one to five stars. Feel free to leave a review too. Of course, if you haven’t already done so, please also subscribe. You’ll get the podcast delivered every Monday automatically to your device. We’ll be back next week.
Speaker 3: Try to get one more call in. Gloria has been waiting in Monroe, Washington. Good morning.
Gloria: Good morning. I think Nick is wonderful. I think he’s a smart, bright young man and we need more people like that running our country.
MUSIC CREDITS – Full versions of the music sampled during this podcast may be purchased via iTunes at the following links : “Cars” by Gary Numan, “Washington Bullets” by The Clash
The “No Uncertain Terms” podcast is produced by Kenn Decter for U.S. Term Limits
Executive Producer Philip Blumel (President, U.S. Term Limits)
