Philip Blumel: Ouch. Not again. Presidential candidate Joe Biden is often referred to as gap pro. When asked about term limits last week, it’s not too surprising what happened next. He blew it.
Philip Blumel:: Hi. I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the term limits movement for the week of September 16, 2019.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel:: What you may find more surprising is President Trump’s latest tweet on the subject. Here to discuss these and other news items is US Term Limits Executive Director Nick Tomboulides. How are you doing, Nick?
Nick Tomboulides: I’m doing better than I deserve.
Philip Blumel:: Tell us about President Trump’s latest tweet.
Nick Tomboulides: Well, this just came out of nowhere last Monday. We haven’t heard much from President Trump on the term limits front lately, but he did get to a keyboard and he blasted out a tweet about term limits for committee chairmen. This is something that we have covered extensively on the podcast that in the mid-1990s, the Republicans imposed a six-year limit on committee chairs to get some churn, to get some fresh ideas, rotation so that one person can’t monopolize that position for too long. Trump tweeted against term limits surprisingly. He said, “House Republicans should allow chairs of committees to remain in longer than six years.” Should I be reading this in Trump’s voice, by the way? I should. Yeah.
Philip Blumel:: Yeah, you should. Start over.
Nick Tomboulides: Trump tweeted Monday that, “House Republicans should allow chairs of committees to remain for longer than six years. It forces great people and great leaders to leave after serving. The Dems have unlimited terms, and while that has its own problems, it’s a better way to go. Fewer people in the end will leave.”
Philip Blumel:: Oh man. Fewer people in the end will leave. Isn’t that what we’re working on?
Nick Tomboulides: That’s what we’re trying to stop.
Philip Blumel:: Of course, it is, and it’s not as if having those leaders stay in those chairmanships forever on the democratic side has been helpful. Remember when the Democrats took back over the house, there was a little mini civil war in that party over this exact issue because the younger members came into the Congress and now they’re looking forward to waiting two decades before they can have any real power on these committees because they’re being held by these unbeatable incumbents that stay there in those seats forever. Here’s Trump who supposedly is a term limits supporter coming out and saying that those term limits should be abolished.
Nick Tomboulides: I’m starting to think that the swamp has drained Trump. If you remember how these term limits on committee chairs came about, it was in the 1990s. It was basically a concession to the term limits movement because Congress refused to give us real term limits, but they bowed to public pressure and they created these committee term limits as a means of refreshing these leadership positions and as a means of mollifying the public. If they roll it back, I think Congress is going to take a huge step backward. It’s like you don’t really think it can get any worse. It would get much, much worse if this were rescinded.
Nick Tomboulides: I was looking at the 10 years of some of the leading committee chairs in Congress right now. There are really four key committees. The most powerful committees in the House are Ways and Means. That’s sort of the tax committee. That’s where they figure out the ways to divide the means. Appropriations, which essentially is slush fund if you want it to be. Financial services and energy. Of those four committee chairmen currently who are all Democrats and, mind you, the Democrats have no term limits, three of them have been in Congress for longer than I have been alive. They’ve actually been in Congress since January of 1989. I was born in June of 1989. That’s the extent of the seniority problem. The one exception, Maxine Waters, she was elected I think two years after I was born, but before that, she spent 14 years in the California legislature.
Nick Tomboulides: Without these committee limits, there is just no way for fresh faces and fresh ideas to surface and make any kind of impact on Congress. It’s just becoming a very closed system and it’s going to have a damaging impact.
Philip Blumel:: Sure. One of the problems that the Democrats have caused by having unlimited terms in their chairmanships is that the leadership of the Democrats in the Congress are far older than the Republican leadership, and that’s particularly ironic because younger voters tend to lean democratic, so there’s a huge gulf between democratic voters and of course the young Democrats who want to run for Congress and those that are holding positions of leadership and are basically blocking younger people from having any effect in Congress. It’s been a big problem for the Democrats. The young Democrats know it.
Philip Blumel:: It’s really disappointing to hear Trump tweet this. I don’t think he thought through it, and he might want to look back to his Trump’s contract with the American voter on the donaldjtrump.com website, which was put up just before the election, in which he listed all these things that he was going to do in the first 100 days. I’d like to remind him that number one on the list, first it says, first propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress. There it is, but of course he can’t actually look at this on his website because it was pulled from the website about one month after Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States. What do you think about that?
Nick Tomboulides: Well, look, as I said in my congressional testimony back in June, it seems like career politicians in Congress want young people just close enough to the political process to help them win, to help them get reelected, but they don’t want them so close they can actually take their jobs. The message Trump is really sending, the message they’re all sending is what’s the point of even running for Congress? What’s the point if you’re a young person? What’s the point if you’re a successful person who wants to spend a few years doing this and make an impact? It is senseless to run for Congress in such a system where the only value prized is how many gray hairs you have on your head rather than how hard you work or what kind of expertise you have on a particular issue.
Philip Blumel:: I think we need to tell the President that we approve of his original idea of imposing congressional term limits and we are disappointed in this new call for limiting the few term limits we have. We have a tool to do that. If you go to termlimits.com and look under the current actions tab across the top, pull that down. You’ll see a bunch of different current actions you can take, and one of them is has the swamp taken over President Trump, something along those lines. You pull that down. You’re going to be able to send a quick message to President Trump and tell him what you feel.
Scott Tillman: Hi. This is Scott Tillman, the national field director with US Term Limits. We asked state legislators and candidates for state legislature to sign a pledge to help us term limit Congress. The pledge reads: 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. Most of us vote for our state House and state Senate members and even year elections, but there are a few states at the odd year elections. Louisiana has odd year elections and they have a jungle primary very late in the year on October 12th. A jungle primary is an election where candidates all appear together irrespective of party. If one candidate gets over 50% of the vote, they win, and if nobody gets over 50% of the vote, then the top two candidates proceed to a runoff election Saturday, November 16th.
Scott Tillman: We now have 88 candidates, 63 in the House and 25 in the Senate in Louisiana who have pledged to support the resolution to term limit Congress. Pledges are available at termlimits.com.
Nick Tomboulides: In a development that will shock absolutely no one, Joe Biden has said something stupid. Biden was approached by US Term Limits Northeast Director Ken Quinn, town hall event in New Hampshire and was asked, where are you on term limits? He just gave an answer that was rambling. It was flat out wrong. Why don’t we play that right now?
Ken Quinn: I had a question to ask you. It’s in regards to term limits for Congress.
Joe Biden: No, I don’t support it because you’d be in big trouble in New Hampshire.
Ken Quinn: Why is that?
Joe Biden: You’re a small state. you’d get nothing.
Ken Quinn: Wouldn’t that level the playing field though for the smallest states over time?
Joe Biden: No, because guess what happens? It’s the number of votes that in fact you can get to get something done. Now you’re in the middle of New York and Massachusetts and Iowa, etc., and guess what? The only way small state senators have bene able to fend for their states is get seniority and be able to get some-
Ken Quinn: That’s the problem. That’s why I was thinking-
Joe Biden: It’s not a problem if you just vote him out of office.
Ken Quinn: What about term limits on the President? Would you like to see term limits on the president removed to allow people to elect whoever they want?
Joe Biden: No, because I think the president has so much power, he can abuse the power to stay in office. I think term limits for president is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Ken Quinn: Could Congress as well abuse that power?
Joe Biden: No, because there are so many of them, you have a countervailing force. There’s no countervailing force to a president other than the Congress as a whole. You see what happens when one party takes a dive.
Philip Blumel:: Wow. Well, he’s contradicted himself here at least twice. First, he’s saying that voters in small states need to keep their career politicians around if they want to have any clout in Congress. Later on in the same remark, he says that voters should vote their career politicians out. He’s just saying whatever comes to his mind clearly.
Nick Tomboulides: Well, seniority has worked out great for Biden personally. He’s from a small state with a small population, Delaware. To give you some context, there are six counties here in Florida where we live with a bigger population than Delaware, but being a career politician has allowed him to transform himself into a big shot. If you think about his career, he was front and center in all that Anita Hill stuff. He got to be Obama’s running mate because Obama needed a guy with no chance of ever outshining him. Biden got a pretty good deal out of it. He got 36 years in the Senate, eight as VP, 44 years of mummification in DC. Not bad, but has it been a good deal for our country? Is Congress better or worse because guys like Biden are spending four decades in the swamp?
Philip Blumel: Right. Delaware is not better off either. Look at a nearby Vermont as an example that comes immediately to mind to me. They have two senators like every state, and both of them are just shy of 80 years old. Both Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy, Vermont senators, are going to be retiring at some point in the near future, probably around the same time. Now Vermont is going to be at the very other end of that continuum where they have two newbies in a seniority based system where incumbents can’t lose. They are going to be at the absolute bottom of the totem pole.
Philip Blumel:: This idea that the small states need to have these long-term incumbents to represent them, that’s not very helpful when they have no seniority at all. In a system with term limits where the seniority is completely compressed and you have a lot of decentralization of power and a lot more opportunity for being in Congress for less time, you see a lot more equalization between the power of the states and not have this giant inequity of power just over one border of a state to the next. He’s very wrong about this.
Nick Tomboulides: What was the most troubling thing Biden said was when he said you’d be in real trouble in New Hampshire if there were term limits. You’re a small state and you’d get nothing. That’s what he told Ken in that clip.
Philip Blumel:: You’d get nothing.
Nick Tomboulides: Here’s the question about that though. Does that mean people in New Hampshire have to reelect their long-term senator or congressman, whether they agree with this person or not, just to maintain their position in line in Congress, less they lose all their influence and get nothing. If you really think about what he’s saying, he’s saying that careerist incumbents can hold their own voters hostage and say keep voting for me or you get nothing. You must vote for me or it’s back of the line for New Hampshire or Maine or Vermont or Delaware or wherever. Biden thinks that’s fine. What about this? What if we pass term limits and we just dismantle the seniority system entirely, right?
Nick Tomboulides: Like here in Florida, we have eight is enough. As a natural byproduct of that, freshman members get great seats on committees. Sophomore members get great seats on committees. They have actual influence in the body no matter where they’re from because like you said, the seniority is a lot more compressed. I think it’s just so appalling that not just that he’s noticing the seniority problem but he’s applauding it. He’s saying like, this is a good thing. We shouldn’t lift a finger to try to fix it. Well, why the hell not?
Philip Blumel: Yeah. I’m sure there’s no one else in Delaware, no qualified, ambitious goals-oriented person who wants to see America be a better place. There’s nobody else in Delaware that can hold that position. Of course there’s no sense for that kind of person to run for that seat because why would you run for that seat when you have a 36-year veteran who can’t lose the election in the seat? The answer is you won’t.
Nick Tomboulides: Can I ask you a series of questions?
Philip Blumel:: Sure.
Nick Tomboulides: How many members of Congress do we have in this country?
Philip Blumel:: 535.
Nick Tomboulides: What is the population of our country?
Philip Blumel:: About 330 million last I checked.
Nick Tomboulides: Are we not the most well-educated and economically prosperous nation in the world?
Philip Blumel:: Yes, we are.
Nick Tomboulides: Is it not the height of arrogance to say that in the most well-educated, economically prosperous, most innovative and entrepreneurial country in the history of the world and in the present day, that there are only 535 people out of 330 million who are qualified to serve in Congress. Give me a break.
Philip Blumel:: These people must be super men. They must be geniuses and super men.
Nick Tomboulides: As Ron Paul is fond of saying, Washington DC has no monopoly on knowledge.
Philip Blumel:: Boy, that’s the truth.
Speaker 7: (singing)
Speaker 8: Members met Tuesday to go over the tax cuts legislation, which are scheduled to reach the house floor today. We’ll hear from Chairman John Boehner, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as well as Chris Farley, who often portrays Mr. Gingrich on Saturday Night Live.
John Boehner: Let’s get to it. Let’s show America how many bills Republican Congress can pass in 10 minutes when we’re not hampered by bizarre, weird Democrats. Okay, first up, HCR-765 which would cut taxes for the middle class. Lower the devastating at the same time. All in favor?
Speaker 10: Aye.
John Boehner: I can’t hear you.
Speaker 10: Aye.
John Boehner: All right. Also, a motion that tax cut bill doesn’t have to go through Senate. All in favor?
Speaker 10: Aye.
John Boehner: All right. How about even though we had nothing to do with it, we take credit for it in the baseball strike. Done. Motion to move nation’s capital to Atlanta, Georgia. [crosstalk 00:15:30] Pipe down. Now look, all right, term limits. You know what? Forget that. I have to talk to delay about this one. Okay.
Philip Blumel:: Last week in North Carolina, we had a special election where two seats were up for grabs. One where there was a disputed election where votes apparently were being stolen by one of the candidates and the election was voided. Why was the other one open, Nick? Was there a death?
Nick Tomboulides: I think the other one was opened due to the death of Walter Jones, longtime congressman from North Carolina.
Philip Blumel:: Right. Two typical reasons why people leave the Congress rather than losing elections would be death and corruption. Anyway, in any case, we had two open seats. The reason why I’m bringing this up is that in both cases, the winners, this is in the third and the ninth congressional districts, were signatories of the US term limits pledge. Now when they’re put into office, they have committed that they would co-sponsor and vote for the US term limits amendment, which they’ll find when they get there. That’s good news once again, and it’s another 100% win for us following on the heels of the special election a week or so ago in Mississippi where 10 out of 10 won. We’re going to move in the right direction.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. What I thought was really cool was the competition you saw in these open seat elections. In district three, I think North Carolina, which the pledge signer won, there were 18 candidates in the Republican primary, and in district nine, there were 11 candidates in the Republican primary. It’s like this mad scrum of competition with so many candidates emerging, a lot more fairness and parity along fundraising lines than you would otherwise see when an incumbent is running for reelection. I think it’s kind of instructive because that’s what you would see all the time if we had term limits. You would see open seats popping up on a regular basis where voters would have these meaningful opportunities to cast ballots. I thought that was really cool.
Nick Tomboulides: The icing on the cake was that both these new congressmen are US term limits pledge signers. I can say from our perspective, we’re going to do all we can to get them on the bill because as we know, saying you’re going to do something in politics and actually doing it are two very different things. I know our team is going to be calling into both these gentlemen trying to get them on the US term limits amendment on the Francis Rooney bill as soon as possible.
Philip Blumel:: Good work, everyone involved. One last note, we’ve been following on the podcast Tom Steyer, presidential candidate, hedge fund investor, billionaire, impeachment activist and also global warming activist. Notably, he is also a big champion of term limits, and he failed to qualify for the last debate but it has just been announced that he has one more poll that shows him with at least 2% of support, and this is in Nevada. Now he’s made it. He’s officially in the next debate, which is going to be October 15th or possibly 16th, and so we have our fingers crossed that we’re going to hear about the issue of term limits in the next debate. We’ll see.
Nick Tomboulides: He was speaking at some kind of democratic convention. I think it was an Iowa or New Hampshire. He said, “You want two reasons why we need term limits. Moscow Mitch McConnell and Leningrad Lindsey Graham, ha ha ha.” It was like the biggest applause line of the speech. It was tremendous. It’s so uncommon that a democratic audience, especially party insiders get to hear this message about term limits, but he’s delivering it, and it’s really working out well for him. His poll numbers are up. That’s how he worked his way into the debate. We’ll see if he decides to talk about it next time. I certainly hope so.
Philip Blumel:: Well, it is something that would set him apart because even though there are other supporters of term limits that are in the field, they’re not bringing up the issue. It is something that would distinguish him if he does, because they can all come out and say, oh, I’m for doing something about global warming or I’m for doing something in the healthcare system or whatever it is they all agree on and they all talk about. Here’s something that would come out of the blue and every head would turn and it would become part of the national discussion, and that’s what we are hoping for.
Nick Tomboulides: By the way, I’m not saying I agree with these policies or not, but I know that a lot of folks on the democratic side of the aisle are itching to see some kind of action on environmental policy. They’re itching to see some kind of action on gun background checks. The narrative within the party is that these reforms they believe in are being held back not by the instincts and beliefs of the congressmen but by the stranglehold of special interests and of lobbyists in Washington DC. It will be interesting to see whether Democrats can draw that line from A to B and realize that when their politicians aren’t listening to them, much like Republican politicians don’t listen to their voters, the reason why is power, the corruption of power.
Philip Blumel:: That’s it and that’s what we’re against.
Philip Blumel:: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. When the two top contenders to win the presidency slammed term limits in the same week, you know we have some work to do. Please take a moment to go to our website, termlimits.com, and pull down the current actions tab at the top. There you will find two important action items. First, go to the swamp has gotten to Trump tab and send the President a reminder that you support term limits and he should too.
Philip Blumel:: Next, if you haven’t already, choose the contact the 2020 POTUS candidates and send a message to all the democratic presidential contenders and ask them to bring up congressional term limits in the debates. A national discussion on the issue will help us advance the term limits convention in the state capitals. That’s it. We’ll be back next week.
Speaker 11: USTL.
Philip Blumel:: I’ll tell you, I love the shriek. It’s the high point of every podcast.