Philip Blumel: Are all term limits created equal? Hi, I’m Philip Blumel, President of US Term Limits. Welcome to the No Uncertain Terms podcast for October 1st, 2018.
Philip Blumel: Last week a poll was released, showing that Congressman Andy Barr and challenger, Amy McGrath in a dead heat. 47% to 47% in the race for Kentucky’s sixth congressional district. The poll, by Polls Opinion Research, suggest that the issue of term limits might be the key to either candidates victory. According to the poll, 81% of voters in the district support a constitutional amendment for term limits on congress. That includes 83% of Republicans, 78% of Democrats, and 82% of Independents. Only 14% of voters opposed term limits.
Philip Blumel: Crucially, the survey found that 69% of voters are more likely to support a candidate who has signed a pledge endorsing term limits. Amy McGrath, the challenger, has signed the US Term Limits Pledge, but incumbent Andy Barr has not. Still, the incumbent Barr, says he supports term limits, and he points to 12 year term limits bills that he has introduced. McGrath on the other hand, has signed the US Term Limits Pledge committing to co-sponsor and vote for an amendment bill of six years.
Philip Blumel: According to the poll, 71% of voters side with McGrath, preferring a six year limit on house members over a 12 year limit. 12 versus six; it’s an issue that frequently pops up in term limits debates. Here to talk about it, is US Term Limits Executive Director, Nick Tomboulides. Hey, Nick.
Nick Tomboulides: Hey, Phil. Good to be with you.
Philip Blumel: So, are we splitting hairs here. I mean, does it really make that much of a difference whether a term limit is long or short?
Nick Tomboulides: Well, I think the ideal term limit is two terms, one in office, one in prison. But that might be a little bit impractical. So, for the purposes of this discussion, yeah. I think a term limit needs to be a good balance. It needs to be a balance between getting enough experience, understanding how the office works. But also making sure that you’re getting fresh faces and ideas in office on a regular basis. And the way I look at it, the longer someone has been in office, the more he or she is able to develop a fundraising connection with special interests. Each time an incumbent wins an election, it becomes that much harder for a challenger to compete. And that starts deterring competition for these seats and it lets the incumbents develop monopolies. When you look at a member’s voting record, the longer someone is in office, the less they tend to listen to their constituents. And so, I think it’s essential that we draw a line before that power of incumbency becomes too strong.
Nick Tomboulides: A six year limit in the house really does craft that right balance between experience and new perspectives, while also making sure that a member has to stay accountable to their constituents. If you have a short term limit, you’re going to get fairer elections, you’re going to have lower barriers to entry, and people from diverse backgrounds will be able to run for office and have a chance to win.
Philip Blumel: Right. And across the country, at every level of government really eight years has been sort of the tested and true term limit. And when most people think of term limits, they think of eight, not really six or 12. But that’s not really an option for Congress because we have six year terms in the Senate. So, it seems like the eight years that everyone is comfortable with and has been proven is approximate to the idea of having six years in the house and 12 years in the Senate. Whereas most state legislatures have eight years in both.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah.
Philip Blumel: Although there are different set ups.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. And do you really need 12 years to learn your job as a member of Congress? Do you need more time to learn your job?
Philip Blumel: I hope not.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. Do you need more time to learn your job than the leader of the free world? If you worked in the private sector, and you came to your boss and said, “Hey, boss, 12 years later, I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing.” You would get a pink slip the next day. You would get the pink slip if you couldn’t figure out your job in 12 days, let alone 12 years. And so I think it’s a ridiculous argument. I think you need a short term limit so that you get a healthy degree of turnover.
Nick Tomboulides: A lot of people like to say, “Well, why not have a 12 year limit in the house and a 12 year limit in the Senate?” That’s not … the house and the Senate were not supposed to be similar in character. If you consult the framers vision for the two chambers, the house was supposed to have more turnover, be more obligated to the people. Senate is actually Latin for council of elders. It was supposed to be more deliberative. It was originally developed without direct election. So it’s more consistent with the intent of the Senate in the framers and the Constitution to give the upper chamber a longer limit than you would give the lower chamber.
Philip Blumel: Yeah. In fact the distinctions between the upper and lower chamber have really been eroded over time. Not just the fact that we have direct elections in both now, but also because we have a permanent incumbency in each. In the house they considered with very short terms, there would be a lot of elections and a lot of turnover, small districts, more rough and tumble, close to the people, maybe even handling more parochial concerns. And the upper house would have long terms, big districts, more aloof and deliberative, and less turnover. And that distinction’s pretty much gone because we have a permanent incumbency in each.
Stacey Selleck: Why does the President of the United States have term limits but members of Congress do not? Term limits are a welcomed check on authority. Indeed, 82% of Americans favor congressional term limits. But why do we have term limits on the President but not congress? The President didn’t always have term limits. At least, not formally. Tradition, since George Washington, was to serve two terms, than step down. Although, Theodore Roosevelt and Ulysses S. Grant both tried for a third term. They were defeated.
Speaker 4: This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around.
Stacey Selleck: FDR successfully broke the two term tradition by winning elections in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. In total, he served 12 years. By the end of his third term, Roosevelt’s failing health made him too ill to serve. He died just a few months after his final inauguration.
Stacey Selleck: This led to the 22nd Amendment. Apparently congress does condone term limits, because it used Article five of the Constitution to propose the Presidential term limits amendment in 1947. Ratified by the states in 1951, the 22nd amendment states that no person elected President and no person to hold the office of President for more than two years, is permitted to be elected more than once more. The longest an individual may serve as President is 10 years, if he or she completes no more than two years of a prior President’s term of office. It makes no difference whether the terms are consecutive.
Stacey Selleck: So why doesn’t congress have term limits? Well, because it doesn’t want term limits. It doesn’t want to impose term limits on itself, even though it had no problem imposing term limits on the President. How do we get an amendment to the Constitution? Up until now, only congress has proposed amendments. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way. In fact, the states have equal power to propose amendments. It takes more of a concerted effort, as 34 states must pass a term limits on congress resolution and convene to discuss proposing the amendment.
Stacey Selleck: Regardless of the method of proposal, whether it be through congress or through the states, 38 states must ratify the amendment in order for it to become part of the Constitution.
Nick Tomboulides: And what’s the point of term limits anyway? You go look at the back of my car in the parking lot, what is the bumper sticker on my bumper say? It says, “Stop career politicians”. If you have a 12 year limit in the house, and a 12 year limit in the Senate, someone could theoretically max out in both those chambers. They would get 24 years in Washington DC. I mean [crosstalk 00:08:36] …
Philip Blumel: That’s a career.
Nick Tomboulides: 24 years is more or less a career. That’s going to sever your connection to your community. And if you have a six year limit, people might only serve two or four years. They might not even finish up the six years before they are again thinking of returning to the private sector. So we want people who are willing to give a few years to public service. And six terms, or 12 years would really attract people who want to be career politicians. That’s what we’re looking to avoid.
Philip Blumel: Some of the benefits that we track of terms limits show up more strongly with shorter limits and less so, or not at all, with longer limits. It’s another important aspect of this. Just the week before last in our podcast, we were talking about a new study that had come out talking about voter turnout and term limits. And what these two researchers had done was look at the 15 states that have term limits in their legislatures and then look at voter turnout in those states versus prior to them having term limits. And also against other states that don’t have term limits. And they found that the term limit states have greater turnout. Well people have more meaningful votes to cast and more elections to vote in, and more competitive elections. Naturally that would be true.
Philip Blumel: But what’s really interesting, is that not all term limits are created equal. And these researchers discovered that in the states that have the most stringent term limits, which would be Michigan and Arkansas before the scam of 2014, when the politicians made them weak again. But the states that have really tough term limits, six years in the house Michigan and Arkansas, they saw about five to six percentage points increase in voter turnout. That’s very impressive, but you know what? They hardly saw any change in voter turnout at all in the states that have 12 year term limits. Because truth is, that those long term limits don’t actually increase turnover in the legislature that much.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. And voter turnout is going to be a product of how competitive your elections are. I was in Michigan not long ago, where the politicians were trying to abolish their term limits. I came in to testify and I asked them a rhetorical question. I said, “there’s only one state in the country that’s got 100% of it’s state legislative elections contested. That means if you were a voter in this state, every time you go to the ballet box, you have a real and meaningful choice.” And I asked the folks [inaudible 00:11:18], “Do you know which state that is? It’s Michigan.” And Michigan has the tightest term limits in America on it’s legislature. Six years in the house, eight years in the Senate. No one is shorter than that.
Nick Tomboulides: So term limits in Michigan have created a revolution of electoral competitiveness. And if we want to see that in other places around the country, other states, at the federal level, we need to write a sufficiently tight term limit that can really reign in incumbents.
Philip Blumel: Welcome to Caught in the Crossfire. Today we feature a debate at the highest level of the US Government. The 44th and 45th US Presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, go head to head on the issue of term limits. Ken?
Ken Decter: That’s right Phil. Never has America been so divided as it is today. And I quake to think what we’re about to witness here.
Philip Blumel: The opening salvo was launched at a rally by then candidate Donald Trump in October 2016, just before the election. Let’s hear it.
Donald Trump: But there’s another major announcement I’m going to make today as part of our pledge, to drain the swamp. If I’m elected President I will push for a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of congress. We’ve been talking about that for years. Decades of failure in Washington and decades of special interest dealing must and will come to an end.
Philip Blumel: Then, just days later, sitting President Barack Obama fired back, not mincing any words.
Barack Obama: I think we want to see new voices and new ideas emerge. That’s probably the reason why I think term limits are a really useful thing.
Ken Decter: Holy moly.
Philip Blumel: But he wasn’t done. From the dias at the Global Citizen Forum in Sao Palo Brazil in June 2017, Barack Obama again tackled Trump’s stirring call with a more thorough rejoinder.
Barack Obama: I think politics suffers when you have the same people staying in power over and over and over again for many years and there’s never any new blood and there’s never any new ideas. And I do believe that if you’re in power for too long, even with the best of intentions, that you become stale. And your government becomes stale. And over time you will not do what’s best for the country and the country will suffer. And so, I see sometimes in the US Congress, people who have been there for 20, 30, 40 years. And because they’re still there, they’re blocking the 25 or the 30 or the 35 year old who is more of their time and could be more innovative and creative in terms of solving the problems that we face today, rather than the problems that we faced 35 years ago.
Ken Decter: Wow. That was really something. Can America ever heal from the vast riffs that divide us?
Philip Blumel: Ken, they actually agreed about term limits here. The former Democratic President and current Republican one probably don’t agree on too much. But …
Ken Decter: Oh, Phil. The media landscape is awash with fear and loathing. The parties have never been further apart. Pets are turning on their owners. The sky is falling. The Earth is flat. You think anything can bring this country back together?
Philip Blumel: Well, a McLaughlin poll from earlier this year suggests that 82% of Americans support term limits.
Ken Decter: 82%?
Philip Blumel: Yeah. That’s right. 82%. 89% of Republican, 76% of Democrats, 83% of Independents. It looks like term limits are one issue that Americans agree on. Perhaps this is the issue our political culture needs so we can start working together again.
Ken Decter: I don’t know. You think the Russians might be behind this?
Stacey Selleck: It’s election season. What do you think your representative’s number one goal is? To get reelected, of course. Fundraising just so happens to be a top priority mandate to DC politicians. Have you gotten a call from your political party asking for money lately? Fundraising is big business in Washington DC. So big in fact, that your newly elected congressional representative is expected to spend half his or her working hours dialing for dollars at a secret phone bank near Capital Hill.
Stacey Selleck: Actually, more than half of their time. Sometimes six to eight hours a day is spent not working on legislation, instead they’re essentially full time telemarketers who are told their top priority is to raise obscene amounts of money dialing for dollars. All this during business hours when they’re supposed to be working for you, the tax payer.
Stacey Selleck: with a starting salary of a mere, $174,000 a year. Shocking, isn’t it? 60 Minutes broadcast an expose unveiling the outrageous phone banking operations of an uncontrollable DC political machine. It couldn’t be clearer that Washington is more about making money than it is about effective governing. The America public already has a low opinion of congress. At last check, they had a 14% approval rating. Yet 90% of them will get reelected.
Speaker 4: This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around.
Stacey Selleck: Congress members are told that their responsibility is to raise as much as $18,000 per day. While legislatures and staff are prohibited by law from making fundraising calls from their offices, both Republicans and Democrats are free to do so at party owned call centers down the block. 60 Minutes took hidden cameras into the private back rooms of one of these operations. Described as “sweat shop phone booths that compromise the dignity of the office”. The scheme includes private call center rooms with modern phone banking technology, prominently displayed donation leader boards listing all of the representatives with their fundraising totals, flow charted fundraising scripts with persuasive talking points on how to handle perspective contributors. A model daily schedule, complete with the breakdown of how many hours a day is expected for each of their congressional duties. Astonishingly, only two hours out of nine to 10 hours a day are to be spend on legislation. The job the citizens hired them to do.
Stacey Selleck: Did I mention starting salaries are $174,000 a year? Members of congress spend too much time raising money, and not enough time doing their job. Cost estimates to win a Senate race, run upwards of $100,000,000. According to a Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, political fundraising quotas are discouraging good people from running for office. There are plenty of people who want to go to Washington to help fix the problems, but don’t want to go to DC to become a mid level telemarketer, dialing for dollars. The whole process is frustrating. The result of a broken system.
Stacey Selleck: Prioritizing fundraising for political campaigns over legislative responsibilities is disastrous for the American people. This reinforces that term limits need to be imposed on members of Congress as a measure to reduce the power of an uncontrolled Washington political machine. This problem cannot be fixed by voting incumbents out. This proves what we have been saying all along. Incumbents have an overwhelming political advantage because we pay them to raise money for their reelections. Challenges don’t stand a chance. Term limits help fix the problem of incumbents indefinitely raising money for their next campaign. At a time when Congress has been breaking records for being unproductive, it does not bode well that the only thing in which incumbents excel, is raising funds for their next election.
Stacey Selleck: The issue of term limits crosses party lines and is exactly what is needed to reduce the influence, special interests have on Capital Hill.
Scott Tillman: This is Scott Tillman, the National Field Director with US Term Limits. Every election cycle, we ask congressional candidates to sign a pledge to support term limits on US Congress. The pledge is for a three house, and two Senate term limit. And this is a pledge that we give to anyone who is running for US Congress. This cycle, we’ve had 369 total signers and of those, 127 are still in the races. That means that they’ve passed their general or passed their primary election and still remain in this race.
Scott Tillman: This is higher than any number we’ve ever had in the past. 127 are still in it, going into the general election this November.
Philip Blumel: Last week we talked a little bit about Illinois, which of course has no term limits and has very little turnover. But they also don’t have elections.
Speaker 8: Make sure we play the booing noise when you say “Illinois”.
Philip Blumel: Oh right.
Philip Blumel: Last week, we talked a little bit about Illinois.
Speaker 10: Boo.
Philip Blumel: Which of course has no term limits and has very little turnover. But they also don’t have elections. We talked about how about half … it is normal in Illinois for half of the legislative races to go uncontested. That means elections aren’t being held. Meanwhile, in Michigan with the tight term limit, we’re having elections in just about every seat all the time.
Nick Tomboulides: Well, it’s funny you say that, because Illinois is kind of on the high side for the number of contested elections. There are some states that only have about a quarter of all their elections contested with 75% getting canceled on a regular basis. So, people in Illinois might want to thank their lucky stars that it’s that good. But of course, you’re never going to get the same degree of competitive elections without term limits as you would if you had a regular check on power at the state level or at the federal level.
Philip Blumel: Right. Right. So, for all these reasons, politicians generally prefer longer terms, or no term, or longer terms in term limits, or no term limits. Whereas voters, citizens generally prefer term limits and shorter ones. We see that over and over again. And so it’s not surprising that in the story I gave in the opening here, that we see the challenger coming out for six year term limits and the incumbent calling for 12.
Philip Blumel: In the early 90s when the term limits were placed on our state legislatures, on many of them, most of those term limits passed by citizens initiatives. And most all of them were either six or eight year terms, on the both houses of their legislatures. And only a couple were 12. And it’s notable that the one state in which the politicians put the term limit on the ballet, rather than the voters, Louisiana, they passed a 12 year term limit. It’s something that we see over and over again. A lot of times, politicians will put a 12 year term limit on the ballet to show how they’re for term limits. But the truth is, that they’re really trying to circumvent, or co-opt an existing effort to put on shorter term limits.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. And the polling could not be clearer. When we asked people in Kentucky, whether they prefer a six or a 12 year limit, it was 71% prefer six year limit. Only 28% wanted a 12 year limit. And those people who want 12 years, probably don’t support term limits that much in the first place. But, you’re absolutely right.
Philip Blumel: Are these two candidates in Kentucky talking about term limits?
Nick Tomboulides: Not enough. Not enough. One question we actually asked in the poll was whether the voters believe that Andy Barr and Amy McGrath are doing a good job communicating their position on term limits. And a 49% [inaudible 00:23:36] said that they were not doing a good enough job telling the voters where they stand. Only 17% thought they were doing a good job. So, if you want … if you’re running for congress right now, listening to this podcast, or you intend to run for congress one day, there’s really no greater boost you can give you campaign than coming out emphatically for term limits right at the very beginning and running on that issue. Because it’s just so popular across the aisle. It’s literally the only issue in America on which President Trump and President Obama agree. Both think congressional term limits are important.
Stacey Selleck: What is the plan to get term limits on congress? We have a multi pronged approach. I’ll discuss the term limits convention route. We are working a grass roots campaign to pass a resolution in 34 state legislatures calling for an Article Five convention for the sole purpose of proposing term limits on congress. The language of our application is quite simple. In just a few paragraphs long, it reads: “Section one, the legislature of insert state name, hereby makes an application to congress as provided by Article Five of the Constitution of the United States of America. To call a convention limited to proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America to set a limit on the number of terms that a person may be elected as a member of the United States House of Representatives and to set a limit on the number of terms that a person may be elected as a member of the United States Senate.”
Stacey Selleck: Section two: “The Secretary of State is hereby directed to transmit copies of this application to the President and Secretary of the Senate of the United States. And to the Speaker, Clerk, and Judiciary Committee Chairman of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States. And copies to members of the Sed Senate, and House of Representatives from this state. Also, to transmit copies hereof to the presiding officers of each of the legislative houses in the several states requesting their cooperation.”
Stacey Selleck: Section three: “This application shall be considered as covering the same subject matter as the applications from other states of congress, to call a convention to set a limit on the number of terms that a person may be elected to the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States and the Senate of the United States. And this application shall be aggregated with same for the purpose of attaining the two thirds of the states necessary to require congress to call a limited convention on this subject. But shall not be aggregated with any other applications on any other subject.”
Stacey Selleck: Section four: “This application constitutes a continuing application in accordance with Article Five of the Constitution of the United States of America until the legislatures of at last two thirds of the several states have made applications on the same subject. So really our goal is to get your state’s house and senate to agree on this resolution and pass it this upcoming legislative session. We can’t do it without you. Your state legislatures need to hear from you to sponsor and vote yes to pass this resolution through all of their committee stops and on the chamber floor. Will you be ready to answer the call to action before each vote? We make it easy for you. Sign our petition at termlimits.com.”
Speaker 11: We need more power.
Philip Blumel: That’s it for this week’s No Uncertain Terms podcast. Thank you for joining us. Yes, I know we’re all another week older now, but look at the bright side, we’re one week closer to achieving term limits on congress. Be sure to subscribe. You can use the podcast app on you iPhone, or download Stitcher on your Android phone. Or of course, iTunes. And while you’re there, be sure to rate and review us.
Philip Blumel: Skeptics say term limits is a great idea, but it’ll never happen. It is happening. Thanks for being a part of it.
Speaker 11: We need more power. We need more power. We need more power. We need more power.
(end podcast)
MUSIC CREDITS – Full versions of the music sampled during this podcast may be purchased via iTunes at the following links :
“We Need More Power” written & performed by Geza X, “Life During Wartime” written by David Byrne as performed by The Talking Heads
The “No Uncertain Terms” podcast is produced by Duke Decter for U.S. Term Limits
Executive Producer Philip Blumel (President, U.S. Term Limits)