People sometimes joke that the ideal term limit is “one in office, one in prison.”
Now reality is catching up to the humor.
Congressman Chaka Fattah, a 33-year career politician, was just sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. Prosecutors are calling Fattah’s crimes “a white collar crime spree” involving plenty of corruption. Worst of all, he did it while serving in Congress and claiming to be one of those Washington experts we hear so much about.
Here’s the Congressman’s Rap Sheet:
-Congressman Fattah stole hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars and charitable contributions to repay an illegal campaign loan.
-Congressman Fattah accepted bribes from a friend who wanted to become a U.S. ambassador.
-Congressman Fattah used campaign cash to pay off his son’s student loan debt.
“You abused the trust they placed in you time and time again,” the judge told him. “Your flagrant behavior undermines the confidence of the citizenry in all public institutions.”
Amen to that. But here’s the problem: corruption is commonplace in Congress and we only hear about those who get busted.
Jack Abramoff, the man who was once D.C.’s most powerful lobbyist, has said most of the corruption on Capitol Hill is actually legal. Campaign cash arrives one day. Favors come back the next. Nothing technically illegal has happened.
We will never have true representation if career politicians are using this job and their status to build empires.
We need to term limits to clean up this mess and fix our broken government.
We can term limit Congress by bringing the states together in a Term Limits Convention to propose the amendment.
Not sure how the process works? CLICK HERE to watch our fun video explaining it.
U.S. Term Limits is currently active across the country working to get this amendment done. We will soon be reaching out to you with exciting activism opportunities to get your state to call for the Term Limits Convention.