Philip Blumel:
Term limits might sink the Turtle. Mitch McConnell has long been an active opponent of congressional term limits and an obstacle to the amendments advanced in the US Senate. This affront to the voters is coming back to haunt him now as his reelection race gets tight. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the term limits movement for the week of June 15th, 2020. I’m joined as usual by Nick Tomboulides, Executive Director of US Term Limits. Hey Nick.
Philip Blumel:
All right. You’ve seen the poll, RMG Group came out with a poll last week saying that former Marine Amy McGrath will defeat Mitch McConnell, or could defeat Mitch McConnell. That they are basically neck and neck. Maybe she’s pulled ahead by about 1%, but that’s within the margin of error. So the race has become very, very tight; but the poll also pointed out that when voters are told that it is McGrath and not McConnell who agrees with President Trump on term-limiting Congress, she jumps out to a 15-point lead. If that’s the case, then Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, after spending 40-some years in Washington, is in trouble.
Nick Tomboulides:
Am I supposed to say something? Yeah, it’s an interesting poll. First of all, it was conducted by RMG Research the legendary pollster, at his company RMG Research, but it was commissioned by US Term Limits. We commissioned this poll. So you know it’s legit. Just to let people know, from time to time we do step into the polling arena to try to shine a light on how term limits is affecting things. We wanted to look at the status of this race and see how term limits could impact it.
Nick Tomboulides:
Because McGrath has signed the US Term Limits Pledge and McConnell opposes term limits. He’s been in the Senate since 1985, six terms for those of you keeping score at home. He’s running for a seventh. In 2017, when Donald Trump said he wanted term limits on Congress, Mitch McConnell was the first person to stand up and say term limits will not be on the Senate agenda. Mitch McConnell is not just opposed to the one Democrat he’s running against on term limits. He’s opposed to President Trump. He’s also opposed to the American people.
Philip Blumel:
Yeah, his opposition to term limits goes all the way back to the 90s when 23 states put term limits on their federal representatives. Even back then, when America was screaming for term limits from the front page of every newspaper, he was dead set against it. He was so against it that he held a cranky press conference in which he said that not only is he opposed to congressional term limits, but he was going to amend a term limits bill in the Senate in order to repeal presidential term limits.
Nick Tomboulides:
It takes some balls. It takes some real balls to say that, honestly. At least he’s consistent. Most of these politicians, they’re such hypocrites, they’ll say, “Well, we have term limits. They’re called elections. Then we’ll go.” What about the President? You want to repeal that? They said, “Oh no, we need term limits for the President.” Isn’t the President elected too? So for most of them, they’re just huge hypocrites, but I guess McConnell decided to say, “Well, we should repeal [inaudible 00:03:21] term limits as well.”
Philip Blumel:
Yeah.
Nick Tomboulides:
Think about it. In the 1990s, all that was going on. We had a tech bubble, I think we had war in Kosovo. We had airstrikes in Afghanistan, we had all this important stuff going on. Mitch McConnell could not think of anything better to do than try to repeal the President’s term limits? How much of an out of touch psychopath do you have to be to do that?
Philip Blumel:
Yeah, he was trying to sink the whole idea of term limits. He has been looking out for number one his entire career, and you’re right. He’s made no bones about it.
Nick Tomboulides:
When you look at this poll though, it’s very interesting because McGrath, like we said, she’s up one point, 41-40 right now. 10% undecided. Margin of error is four. What that means is she may actually be behind. I would bet she really is behind, it’s probably error. But when you inform people that she’s for term limits and McConnell is not, she jumps out to a 15-point lead. 15 points, and she’s not just getting all that support from her own party.
Nick Tomboulides:
She’s doubling her share of support from Republicans. She’s going from 9% to 17%, nearly doubling with Republicans. With independents, she’s going up by 10%. So if she really grabs on, if she rides the term limits wave and makes her entire campaign about this, she can beat Mitch McConnell. The problem is most Kentucky voters are totally unaware that Amy McGrath supports term limits, because she hasn’t done a good enough job publicizing that.
Philip Blumel:
She’s seen this polling. We know this because she tweeted about it as soon as it came out, and said Mitch has been in the DC swamp… which he created… for six terms. “Kentuckians support term limits and they’re ready for a change.”
Nick Tomboulides:
63% of likely voters in this race are either unaware McGrath supports term limits, or they falsely think she opposes it. I’m all for voters making decisions, but in order for voters to make decisions and for this republic to work, voters need accurate information before they go into the ballot box.
Philip Blumel:
Right.
Nick Tomboulides:
It’s a typical situation where an incumbent like McConnell, he depends on voters lacking information in order to keep his power.
Philip Blumel:
Should Florida bail out New York? That is the provocative headline in the Wall Street Journal on May 17th. The editorial looked at the way the two states have managed their economy and finances over the last decade. The comparison has some lessons for the term limits movement. From anti-term-limits politicians and lobbyists, one often hears about the value of experience and how term limits lead to a government run by infants, who are led by the hand by seasoned lobbyists and told what to do.
Philip Blumel:
New York, on the other hand, does not have term limits. It has dozens of members elected in 1990s, 1980s, and even as early as the year 1970. New York legislators are full-time. They earn high salaries and are provided with large staffs. There is no shortage of political experience in New York.
Philip Blumel:
On the other hand, Florida has eight-year term limits on its legislature and new members are joining the legislature in large numbers every election cycle, from many different walks of life. They work part-time and require outside employment, as their compensation as a legislator is low. New York started 2010 with a larger population. They had 19.4 million people to Florida’s 18.8 million. But over the last decade from 2010 to 2020, people moved to Florida, more people left New York. Florida’s population is now higher at 21.5 million to New York’s 19.5 million. Clearly millions of Americans are seeing Florida as doing something right.
Philip Blumel:
In spite of this population shift, New York’s budget is much larger than Florida’s and growing at a faster rate. New York spends $177 billion a year, whereas Florida’s budget is expected to be just a little over half that size at $93 billion. So much for lobbyists running the show. Whoever heard of a lobbyist hired to convince legislators to spend less money? These are big numbers. The Wall Street Journal tries to put this in perspective. New York has increased spending by 43 billion since 2010, about 570,000 for each new resident of the state. Florida’s budget has increased by 28 billion while its population has surged. Spending has increased by $10,400 per new resident.
Philip Blumel:
New York has a state income tax at 12.7% while Florida does not have a state income tax at all. Yet New York has a budget deficit while Florida does not. New York’s spending on worker retirement benefits has doubled since 2010 and is six times greater than Florida’s. The rate of job growth in Florida has been about 60% higher than in New York over the last decade. The Wall Street Journal editorial goes on and on with such comparisons, but I think the point’s made. The fact that Florida, which has more term limits top to bottom than any other state, is also one of the best run in the country, certainly in this example versus New York.
Philip Blumel:
Now, we don’t contend that this outperformance by term limit States like Florida is due only to term limits, but we can safely say that an entrenched elite of experienced politicians is no guarantee of good government. In fact, it is often an impediment. The regular introduction of new faces and ideas, the relative independence from lobbyists asking for money, and of course the broader range of experience that Florida enjoys, has served it well.
Scott Tillman:
Hi, this is Scott Tillman, the National Field Director with US Term Limits. We now have over 1,000 candidates for state legislature who have signed this pledge to term-limit Congress. “I pledge that as a member of the state legislature, I will co-sponsor, vote for, and defend the resolution applying for an Article V convention for the sole purpose of enacting term limits on Congress.” In the last two weeks, we have had primaries in 13 States where we have 471 pledge signers. Of those, 297 will now proceed to run-offs or to the general election in November. That includes over 80 Democrats and over 200 Republicans. This is the most popular nonpartisan issue in the country.
Scott Tillman:
Nine additional state legislature candidates are in races still too close to be called. We ask congressional candidates to sign this pledge. “I pledge that as a member of Congress, I will co-sponsor and vote for the US Term Limits Amendment of three House terms and two Senate terms, and no longer limit.” We had nine new congressional pledge signers who won their primaries, and an additional three others that are now proceeding to run-offs. Now is a great time for you to contact candidates in your area and ask them to sign the Term Limits Pledge. Like our page on Facebook, and there you’ll find instructions on getting the pledge to candidates in your area. Please take action to help us term-limit Congress.
Philip Blumel:
We’ve been following the story in Louisiana, as the Term Limits Amendment Bill has been working its way through the legislature. If you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know what a heartbreak it was over the last month when the bill went through the entire House, went through the Senate all the way to a Senate floor vote, and we lost it in the final moments of the regular session.
Philip Blumel:
But a new session has begun, a special session. It’s only a month long, but the bill has been reintroduced into the House, which it’d have to pass again. The big news this last week is that it had its first hearing, passed unanimously in no time. They’ve already discussed these issues. They already have determined they’re for it, so it took no time at all. So Nick, have you had any word if this is going to get a floor vote in the House, and what kind of movement have we seen in the Senate?
Nick Tomboulides:
It is heading for a floor vote, yes. Louisiana, honestly, it seems like Groundhog Day because we keep having to redo the process. But the convention, once again, passed the Government Affairs Committee, the term limits convention got through the House Government Affairs Committee last week. Kudos to our sponsor, Mark Wright; our regional director, Ken Clark and Ken Quinn; and also Shanna Chamblee, our legislative director, for helping us with that effort.
Nick Tomboulides:
Now it will go to the House floor again, and then to the Senate. So it is moving along in Louisiana. We’re still a little bit unsure about the vote count in the Senate. You do need 20 votes out of 39. On the first go around, it had 16. So we do need to turn that around. We do need to take some senators who were either absent from that vote or voted “no”, and move them into the “yes” column. So definitely go on our website, check out current actions, take action, contact senators in Louisiana.
Philip Blumel:
Very good. There’s still hope there, and it’s moving. So that’s good news. We also saw some news around the country during the primaries of last week. I think Georgia, North Dakota, West Virginia, we had primaries held and we got some really good results from our efforts there. Because as listeners recall, we’ve taken a role in educating voters, whether or not candidates have signed the Term Limits Pledge or not, and whether if they are sent to the legislature, that they’re going to be supportive of the Term Limits Convention. I saw from our memo that we had an 82% success rate. That looks fantastic. You got some details for us, Nick?
Nick Tomboulides:
Yeah. We were active in 17 races this past Tuesday in Georgia, North Dakota and West Virginia. This was voter education. It involved mailings, it involved digital ads on behalf of candidates who had signed the pledge. Now, we don’t tell anyone who to vote for, but we put the facts in front of the voters and say, “Look, this is who supports term limits. This is who doesn’t.” Then they can make the choice on that basis. As you said, 82% overall success rate. In Georgia, we played in nine races. We had eight wins. That’s an 89% success rate. Two of our wins result in a runoff in August. In North Dakota, we only played in one race, but we won. It was a very significant race because our two pledge signers actually defeated a 26-year incumbent.
Philip Blumel:
Wow. Wow.
Nick Tomboulides:
They defeated representative Jeff Delzer, who’s very powerful. He was in leadership. He first got elected in 1991, actually. Then he came back in 1994 and he stayed continuously. So 26-year incumbent went down in North Dakota as a result of his refusal to support term limits for Congress. Then in West Virginia, we played in seven races, won five of those. In one of those, it was a multi-member district with three winners where all three were pledge-signers.
Philip Blumel:
[crosstalk 00:14:46].
Nick Tomboulides:
So I think it was a very good night, a very consequential night in seeing that the cavalry is coming to defend term limits and fight for it across these three states.
Philip Blumel:
That’s great. Now, I want to remind listeners that the importance of this is not just someone says they’re for term limits, because politicians know the polling and they can go around and say anything they want. The point is that when we say that someone supports it, they didn’t just say so, they signed the pledge. As we know, when these bills come up for consideration in the state capitals, politicians for the most part live up to their obligations when they actually put pen to paper on this pledge. So this is meaningful when we get down to pushing the Term Limits Convention Bill. So yeah, great day last week for the term limits movement around the country.
Nick Tomboulides:
When you’ve got it in writing, it’s so much more effective to hold someone accountable than if you just took their word for it.
Philip Blumel:
Right.
Nick Tomboulides:
They’ve written, “I pledge to support an Article V convention for the sole purpose of putting term limits on Congress.” It is so crystal clear. When you show it to the voters, they understand it. It’s really, really difficult if not impossible to evade this commitment for a long period of time. You might be able to do it in a moment, in a singular vote or something, but then US Term Limits comes around and we whack you in the back of the head again with your own statements. That’s the importance of getting it in writing, getting that degree of accountability.
Philip Blumel:
If they sign it, make that pledge to the voters and they turn around and break it, every voter knows they’ve been screwed.
Speaker 4:
This is a public service announcement.
Philip Blumel:
When considering Congress, it is easy to be cynical, but yes, sometimes politicians do tell the truth. This is Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska in the Senate Judiciary Committee in early June.
Ben Sasse:
Mr. Chairman, before you go to Senator Cruz, can we get a sense of how long we’re going to be here?
Speaker 6:
Yeah.
Ben Sasse:
Because some of us have other committees and with all due respect, I don’t think anybody in private ever disagrees with me when I say it’s bullshit, the way people grandstand for cameras in here. The reality is if we didn’t have cameras in this room, the discussion would be different. The Senate doesn’t work. It doesn’t diffuse the partisan tensions. They’re leading the country toward dissolution. I’m for transparency, I’m for print reporters being everywhere. I’m for audio transcripts being everywhere. But 90% of our committees are about people trolling for soundbites. That’s what actually happens. So some of us have other work to do. People can troll for soundbites whenever they want, but can we at least have a sense of when we’re going to take our votes, so people can come back?
Philip Blumel:
Thanks for joining us for another weekly episode of No Uncertain Terms. With elections coming, your state legislator needs to hear from you. Go to termlimits.com and under the ‘current actions’ tab, choose ‘contact your state legislator’. Put in your address and you can send an email to both your state House and Senate rep to sign the Term Limits Pledge. That’s term limits.com under the ‘current actions’ tab. Thank you. We’ll be back next week.
Speaker 7:
If you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe and leave a review. The No Uncertain Terms podcast can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, and now Google Play.
Speaker 8:
USTL.