Philip Blumel: Another victory, Louisiana. Boom. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the Term Limits Movement published on May 20th, 2024. This is episode number 238.
Stacey. Selleck: Your Sanctuary from Partisan Politics.
Philip Blumel: So right on the heels of victory in Tennessee. The eighth state has now officially applied for the Term Limits Convention with the approval in the Louisiana House on May 13th. The Louisiana Senate had already passed it in March, as we have reported previously on this podcast. The Term Limits Convention bill sponsored by State Representative Mark Wright and State Senator Mark Abraham was approved in a bipartisan 81 to 11 vote. Article V of the US Constitution provides states the authority to impose term limits on Congress without congressional approval. For the Term Limits Amendment Convention to be called though a total of 34 states must pass similar resolutions. Once a term limits amendment is proposed at a convention, it must be ratified by 38 states for it to be added to the US Constitution and this process allows states to completely bypass Congress.
Philip Blumel: Now, personally I don’t think it’s gonna be necessary to bypass Congress. Once we get to a critical mass of states calling for the Term limits Convention, I think the incentives will completely change and all of a sudden overnight it’ll be in the self-interest of Congress to pass an amendment. After all, when Congress sees that a convention is inevitable, they will want to write it. I mean that’s what’s always happened in history anyway, we’ll see. But before that question is answered, we have some more states to win. You can really feel the momentum growing. Do you realize we have passed three states this year. Florida, Tennessee, and now Louisiana. 2024 is our best year so far and we might not be done yet. North Carolina could be number four. North Carolina passed the Term Limits Convention in 2023. That is to say the North Carolina House passed it, but they have a two-year session so we have until the end of 2024 to pass the Senate and claim the fourth state. Hey, we’re on the case. Your contributions have been used to secure victory after victory. Please keep them coming.
Speaker 3: This is a public summit announcement.
Philip Blumel: Attention New Yorkers term limits may be coming to your state. Here’s an important announcement from Sophia McKeever on how you can help make that happen.
Sophia McKeever: New York is in the minority. It is one of just 13 states who don’t have term limits on their gubernatorial offices. Even though a new poll shows 70% of New Yorkers favor implementing term limits on our executive branch. We are working with Unite New York who will be hosting a lobbying day in Albany for term limits on the New York governor and statewide offices. It’ll take place Tuesday, May 21st and Wednesday May 22nd, 2024 at 8:30 AM. Please RSVP for this important event at home.uniteny.org/events. Again, that is home.uniteny.org/events and this is Sophia McKeever with US Term Limits.
Philip Blumel: As Sophia suggests, the ground is rumbling in the Empire State. New Yorkers are not a happy bunch these days. A new poll finds that nearly one in three New York City voters are considering leaving New York. When asked why, most cited higher taxes, but nearly two thirds said “The government is broken and or corrupt.” This poll was commissioned by Unite New York. This is the kind of organization that at one time might have been described as a good government group. I don’t know if that terminology is still used anymore, maybe. Anyway, in their words, unite New York is a movement focused on engaging and empowering voters on important issues of reform that will allow for more voices and more choices and ultimately more democracy. The membership organization seeks a more fair, open, and representative democracy that results in the voice of voters being heard by evolving the electoral system so that officials put what more voters want ahead of party interests. Learn more www.uniteny.org.
Philip Blumel: Now that sounds like an organization that would be a big support of term limit, s and indeed it is. In this, they represent the 64% of New York City registered voters in the poll that express support for term limits on the governor. The state legislature is considering legislation that would impose term limits for all statewide officers, and that is a bill that Unite New York strongly supports. So as Sophia shared in this week’s public service announcement, Unite New York is sponsoring a lobby day for citizens to join them walking the halls of the State Capitol in Albany, advocating for tournaments and other reforms. That is Tuesday and Wednesday, May 21st and 22nd. Yes, this week, at 8:30 AM. You can get more info and RSVP at home.uniteny.org. In a recently released video, David Green of Unite New York made the case for New York gubernatorial term limits under the title, How to Bring Politicians Back to Reality. Let’s hear at excerpt.
David Green: In the past 20 years, we’ve had every single statewide office leave in disgrace.
Speaker 6: Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin has resigned after he was arrested on charges campaign finance fraud.
Speaker 7: Alan Hevesi, former New York State Comptroller pleaded guilty to the felony charge…
Speaker 8: Governor Andrew Cuomo revealing he will resign.
Speaker 9: Has more on the circus in Albany.
David Green: Politicians in New York state aren’t out of touch. It’s not a good record. At Unite New York, last year we ran polling multiple times and we found some pretty troubling numbers. We found that 56% of voters thought that the state is on the wrong track. Four out of 10 voters were considering leaving the state because of our broken politics, and only 10% of voters thought that we were ahead of the curve on election reform. I encounter New Yorkers who are hopeless. They don’t feel like change can actually happen. They don’t feel like their government listens to them. When looking at the national perspective, we see more of the same. We have two presidential candidates running that are a combined age of 158, and voters want fresh faces, they want someone new, a lot of them want literally anyone else. The system as it is, is causing bad incentives for elected officials and it’s not giving voters as many voices and choices as possible. We want to change this from the ground up.
David Green: So often when people enter office, they come in for good reasons and when they get into office they work on it, it takes a while to adjust to the political world and then after some amount of time they can try to make that change. But the thing is, if you let people be in office much longer than that, they’re not there to make a change for their constituents, they’re there just to stay in power.
David Green: So, when someone is an incumbent for a really long time, they can over time build up an incredible war chest that allows them to stay in office, and then once they’ve built up that kind of infrastructure, it can be really hard for someone new to break into that system. Politicians, once they have the incumbency advantage, and they’re running consistently as the person who’s already in the seat, they can win elections over and over again. It is very hard for someone to come in and challenge them and boot them out of power.
David Green: When we have people that spend their entire lives as politicians, they’re gonna get out of touch. They’re not going to be able to understand what normal Americans are going through. Surely we can do better.
David Green: Now in the past few years in New York, we’ve seen a lot of progress on voter access. We’ve seen publicly financed campaigns, independent redistricting, improved registration, but despite that, voters aren’t happy. They’re expressing that there are issues with the system as it stands. It seems that the only thing that can make people leave office on the statewide level is death, the criminal justice system, or their own embarrassment.
David Green: We’ve had really low voter turnout in New York, less than 15%, and we now have more independent voters than we’ve ever had before. So they really deserve a voice. We wanna change the incentives that politicians have.
David Green: So term limits are a limit on the amount of terms or years in office that an elected official can have. We have this in a lot of the country. 37 states have term limits for governor, and 16 states have term limits of some kind for their legislatures. In New York City, there are term limits for the mayor and for the city council, and judges in New York have to leave office at age 70, but statewide we don’t have that at all.
David Green: When looking at the national perspective, as you probably know, the president is limited to two terms, but for Congress you can serve as many terms as you want, you can serve for 40 years, your whole life. The longest serving congress person ever, John Dingell served for almost 60 years. The bill we’re supporting enacts common sense term limits. A three-term limit on all statewide offices, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and comptroller.
David Green: Term limits end the perpetual campaign cycle. This frees up elected officials to do the right thing instead of just what’s politically expedient. This means that complicated and important political issues might actually get the attention that they deserve. Thankfully, Unite New York is not alone in our advocacy. Governor Kathy Hochul in her first State of the State in 2022 proposed term limits.
Governor Kathy Hochul: We are submitting a proposal to the legislature to enact two term limits for statewide officials. For government to work those of us in power cannot continue to clinging to it.
Philip Blumel: Across the country and nearly three quarters of Democrats want term limits and more than 80% of Republicans.
Speaker 11: Moving forward with sensible term limits can improve how Congress works.
Speaker 12: The American people overwhelmingly support term limits and that’s on a bipartisan basis.
Speaker 13: We need term limits, which 75% of us are for, it’s common sense, let’s get this done.
Donald Trump: When elected president I will push to impose term limits on all members of Congress.
Barack Obama: I think we wanna see new voices and new ideas emerge, that’s part of the reason why term limits are really a useful thing.
David Green: When Democrats and Republicans can agree on something, probably there’s a reason.
Philip Blumel: Our own Holly Robichaud interviewed Tim Dunn of Unite New York earlier this year as well. To watch the interview go to youtube.com/ustermlimits, all one word. Next, would a Term Limits Convention run away? And what does that mean anyway? We still hear claims from time to time that the constitutional provision in Article V that permits states to propose a constitutional amendment like the Congress can do is dangerous and that it can run away. And by run away one means the convention veers off its intended subject. This was the subject of a fascinating commentary published by Politico, written by Robert Printer, Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at Long Island University. Now Printer looked at the four major Article V convention movements in the United States currently and he evaluated them from the standpoint of which had some possibility of “running away”. Of course the fact that amendments proposed by convention just like those proposed by Congress require ratification by 38 state legislatures to become law protects us from crazy or radical or unpopular amendments getting through. But it doesn’t protect us from politicians bogging down the convention process by getting off track, right? If the scope of the convention is too wide, one could imagine a convention of politicians being unfocused, much like Congress.
Philip Blumel: Well the amendment process by convention is considered safer than amendment by Congress because the convention process is tied to a 34-state application where the applicants agree in advance what the convention is gonna be about. You know, you don’t have that in Congress. Delegates are sent to the convention with instructions from their respective states based on the convention stated purpose. Now Congress, as I said, doesn’t have that safeguard, and that’s why nearly 200 constitutional amendments are introduced on average each two-year term of Congress. These things are all over the place and it includes some really crazy ideas, and most go nowhere of course. They have to get through both houses of Congress and then they of course they have to pass 38 states for ratification, and so far in our history, less than 30 have done so. Okay. Back to Printer, the four major Article V convention movements in the United States right now are the Convention of States project, the Balanced Budget Amendment, Campaign Finance Reform, and of course, the Term Limits Convention. And Printer rates each of these. He argues the wider the scope of the convention application, the greater the danger of having the convention veer off topic. Here’s how he rates each of the four.
Philip Blumel: The Convention of States is the project that aims to call a convention to propose a number of amendments aimed at limiting the federal government with regard to spending, taxation, and, debt as well as term-limiting congress, the courts, and perhaps granting the state’s power to override executive orders, federal law and regulations. Printer sees this is a pretty wide scope and hence gives it a “very high potential of runaway” versus the others.
Philip Blumel: The Balanced Budget Amendment is more focused but still the budget touches on many issues and requires many complicated provisions. Such an amendment would have to include provisions for emergency workarounds by congressional super majorities. I’m quoting Printer here. It seeks to address the various issues of an unanticipated needs of spending as well as revenue shifts from those projected at the time the budget has passed. Proposed workarounds granting Congress flexibility needed versus wartime, for instance usually entail requiring congressional super majority approval for exceptions, tax increases, and major unanticipated occurrences. Well, with all these curly cues, Printer sees room for a convention getting bogged down. Honestly, and you know I’m an expert on this subject myself, I don’t buy the threat that he sees in these two projects, but I certainly understand his argument, and I understand that they are more prone to get bogged down, in a relative sense.
Philip Blumel: All right, next. Printer sees a low likelihood of runaway from the Campaign Finance Reform project, which aims to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision Citizens United versus FEC. All right, now for the punchline, what about Term Limits? Well, regarding the Term Limits Convention, Printer sees the scope as the most narrow and the chance for a runaway as “approaching zero.” Not only that, Printer goes further predicting without qualification that if a Term Limits Convention were imminent, “Congress will surely preempt”. He says, “Congress will dread a convention made up of state legislators who acting in self-interest would impose tight term limits with no grandfathering. A ballot’s budget amendment threatens privilege. Campaign Finance Reform is their bread and butter, and Term Limits threaten their entire careers and livelihood. Preemption is as close to a sure thing as anything in the political sphere can be.” Note that he feels that preemption is likely in a Balanced Budget amendment convention and also one on the subject of Campaign Finance Reform. History suggests Printer is right. There’s never been an Article V convention because when the states threaten one, as they have several times in history, Congress has historically responded by proposing their own amendment. So like Printer we at US Term Limits expect history to repeat, and like most Americans, I can’t wait.
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Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. The Term Limits Convention bills are moving through the state legislatures. This could be a breakthrough year for the Term Limits Movement. To check on the status of the Term Limits Convention resolution in your state, go to termlimits.com/takeaction. There you will see if it has been introduced and where it stands in the committee process on its way to the floor vote. If there’s action to take, you’ll see a Take Action button by your state. Click it. This will give you the opportunity to send a message to the most relevant legislators, urging them to support the legislation. They have to know you’re watching. That’s termlimits.com/takeaction. If your state has already passed the Term Limits Convention resolution, or the bill’s not been introduced in your state, you can still help. Please consider making a contribution to US Term Limits. It is our aim to hit the reset button on the US Congress and you can help. Go to termlimits.com/donate. Termlimits.com/donate. Thanks. We’ll be back next week.
Stacey Selleck: Find us on most social media at US Term Limits. Like us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and now LinkedIn.
Speaker 16: USTL.