Philip Blumel: Does Congress play by different rules? Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the term limits movement, for the week of September 30th, 2019. In a word, yes, and it has long been so. Congressional scandals helped spark the term limits movement in the early 1990s and they continue to do so today. In this episode, US Term Limits field director Scott Tillman continues his interview of former US Term Limits director Paul Jacob, now chief of The Liberty Initiative Fund. Take it away guys.
Scott Tillman: One thing that really lit a fire under the term limits movement was the house banking scandal. Paul, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Paul Jacob: Yes, it was a huge issue in 1992. The issue was that they had a house bank. I don’t know why members of the house or the senate couldn’t just use the banking system the rest of us have. They had their own bank.
Scott Tillman: It was an exclusive bank on Capitol Hill where you go and you get a checking account and a savings account. I mean that like …
Paul Jacob: Yes.
Scott Tillman: … bank then.
Paul Jacob: The key element, the key part of the scandal is at the house bank when you write a check but don’t have any money they go ahead and make that check good. There were some members, for instance, I grew up in Central Arkansas and my congressman when I moved to Washington was Tommy Robinson who just turned out to be the biggest check bouncer of all. He had 996 overdrafts. These are where you’re writing a check but you don’t have the money there.
Paul Jacob: I think that what happened with him and what happened with a lot of folks is they realized they could in essence take out interest-free loans by just writing a check and then making the house bank pay it, and then taking their sweet time to ever pay it back. 996 overdrafts.
Scott Tillman: This is going back to the days before, I think, a lot of people had overdraft protection.
Paul Jacob: Yes. It’s also at this same time or within a couple of years as this was going on you had Dan Rostenkowski who was considered, as the chairman of house ways and means, one of the most powerful congressmen in the country, and he got caught. He was basically defrauding the post office, the house post office, and doing deals where he would buy stamps with his congressional funds, and then take those stamps back to the post office and get his money back, and put the money in his pocket. What?
Paul Jacob: I mean come on. This is one of the most powerful men in the country being shown to be a petty thief. It was this sort of thing that drove people crazy. The house bank also had the aspect not just of fraud and of abuse and bad behavior, but also that they’re living in some kind of strange world where the rest of us have a banking system where there are certain rules apply and nobody gets special treatment, and they’ve got this ridiculous system.
Paul Jacob: Some of these scandals, I think what made them so powerful wasn’t that somebody did something bad. People do bad things. It was that you had a system that when they found something bad was going on, didn’t do anything to fix it, tried to cover it up, and tried to explain it away as nothing.
Speaker 4: Liberty Solutions here. We are a no whining allowed show on what the people can actually do about today’s problems. Who decides, you or DC career politicians surrounded by marble and money? Today’s episode is on term limits with special guest Philip Blumel. Philip is president of US Term Limits. This organization is dedicated to promoting an amendment to the US Constitution establishing term limits for Congress via an Article V convention.
Speaker 4: We discussed term limits at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit 2018 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. We’re here with Philip Blumel from US Term Limits. He’s going to tell us a little bit about his organization.
Philip Blumel: Sure. US Term Limits has been around since 1991. We’re the premiere term limits organization in the United States. We were the organization that was responsible more than any other for the wave of term limit successes in the 1990s where, as you may or may not recall, 23 states successfully term limited their federal congressmen via the citizens’ initiative process. It’s the most successful citizens’ initiative wave in American history. The obvious question is why aren’t they term limited now?
Speaker 4: Yeah. What happened?
Philip Blumel: Right. Well, there’s that wrinkle. The wave elections was in 1990, 1992, and 1994. The Supreme Court in 1995 in the case US Term Limits versus Thornton threw out all those successful initiatives and voided all those term limits. What the Supreme Court said was that it cannot be done by individual states, that it can only be done by a constitutional amendment under Article V.
Speaker 4: They’re saying that the states cannot decide how they pick their own congressmen?
Philip Blumel: That is correct. We argued. We had two main arguments. One of them was the one you just alluded to or implied that states do have that right under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. That was the argument that Clarence Thomas made in favor of the term limits elections. It was a five-four decision, and the minority thought that, indeed, it was a 10th Amendment right of states, whereas the majority did not.
Speaker 4: I can’t think of anything in the Constitution that says that states can’t do that.
Philip Blumel: No. The majority argued that term limits are in effect a qualification, and that the qualifications listed for congressmen in the Constitution was an exclusive, was a complete list, which doesn’t say that. Quite right. We also argued that we didn’t even see it as a qualification. We saw it as a ballot access restriction, much like you have to collect signatures if you’re a minority party to get on the ballot, or that elections are held on Tuesday only till 7:00 PM, or things like that, things of that nature.
Philip Blumel: We looked at that as a time, place, and manner restriction, which is clearly and explicitly in the states. We felt that it was wrongly decided, and it was a five-four decision, so it’s not set in stone. It may be revisited in the future. The Supreme Court has been changing. We can grouse over our loss, or we can lick our wounds and get back into the fight with a new idea. That’s what we’ve done and that’s what we’re doing with the idea of a term limits convention under Article V.
Philip Blumel: The court said we have to do an amendment. It’s very unlikely that Congress is going to pass a term limits amendment on themselves, so we’re looking at the convention route under Article V. To hear the complete interview, check out the term limits episode of Liberty Solutions at buzzsprout.com.
Scott Tillman: Congressmen and people in those positions of authority know that these things are going on, and they’re not going to take action until they get found out. For example, the recent sexual harassment slush fund where every time somebody made a complaint they were paying it out of this government slush fund. It’s always when we find out about them people are incredibly surprised, but to keep it out of the news until they have to take action. Now, it’s been found out. Now they have to take action on it.
Paul Jacob: Yes, but now we’re talking about sexual harassment, and sexual assault in some cases, and it being not just ignored and papered over but using tax dollars, our money to pay off people and in a system that is designed not just to pay them off but to pay them off so they remain quiet. This is to me probably the most serious abuse of the public trust that I’ve ever run across. I was just amazed that they’ve now taken some steps, and they’re looking at how do we change this, and so on. I don’t know why in literally 24 hours that wasn’t changed.
Paul Jacob: If you found out that there was a slush fund at your office to do these sorts of things and you were the CEO or in a position of any power, you would immediately take action. Our Congress debates it and yet people are continuing to get paid off.
Scott Tillman: Essentially two forms of corruption that I see. You have the out-and-out corruption where you’re robbing. You’re getting stamps and you’re taking them and returning them and keeping cash. Then you have the legalized, I don’t know what the term for it was, where they just feel that it’s okay.
Paul Jacob: Arrogance might be one word for it, but it’s the separation that instead of representing us they are in essence separating from us and building themselves a world that’s designed for their benefit at our expense. The sexual abuse slush fund, this combines the worst elements of this. It’s sleazy. It’s rotten. It’s involved with criminality, because, you know what, when you harass or assault people sexually that’s a pretty doggone serious crime. It’s also about them living in a different world where somehow they get to get away with this because they’ll use someone else’s money to pay off the poor person that they’ve abused.
Paul Jacob: It’s not as if it wasn’t in the press, but I was a little bit disappointed that there wasn’t more recriminations. I just could not believe that it just goes on and on without a solution.
Scott Tillman: This is one of the things where it’s very easy and you see why people get very upset, and everybody is, “Throw the bums out. We want term limits just because we’re angry at the people who are there now.” Term limits is actually a policy change that fixes a big part of both of these corruption issues. If you have new people coming in on a regular basis and somebody is robbing the piggy bank, somebody will see that.
Paul Jacob: The corruption is almost expected. It’s almost like, “Well, that’s the way the system works.” That’s not working.
Nick Tomboulides: U.S. Term Limits published this letter in the Columbus Ledger Inquirer in Columbus, Georgia, on August 25th, 2019. Congressman Drew Ferguson needs to keep his promise. Term limits for Congress is the most popular and bipartisan issue in America. It has support from 82% of voters including 89% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats and 83% of independents.
Nick Tomboulides: That’s why when Ferguson was running for Congress in 2016 he signed a pledge promising to co-sponsor and vote for a specific term limits amendment, three house terms, two senate terms. President Donald Trump has endorsed this same amendment. Now that Ferguson has become a powerful incumbent, however, he refuses to keep his word.
Nick Tomboulides: He refuses to sponsor house joint resolution 20 for term limits, despite having pledged his support in writing. My group, U.S. Term Limits, has reached out to Ferguson repeatedly and reminded him of his commitment. We’ve made no progress. Ferguson seems more determined to side with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell than with his own constituents.
Nick Tomboulides: Unfortunately Ferguson’s behavior is all too typical of what Americans have come to expect from their so-called representatives, campaign rhetoric leading to a mountain of broken promises. This corrupting influence of the Washington machine is why so many people favor term limits in the first place. We want elected officials who will change the system before it changes them.
Nick Tomboulides: If you talk to Congressman Ferguson, please ask him to reconsider breaking his promise on term limits. The people of District 3 in Georgia deserve much better. They deserve a leader who keeps his word, sincerely, Nick Tomboulides, executive director U.S. Term Limits.
Paul Jacob: People over time can be corrupted and can see ways that they can take advantage of their position. It’s not unheard of that someone’s crooked from the second they walk into a position, but it’s not the norm. The norm in terms of corruption is it’s people who’ve been there a while and learned the ropes, and then they do something bad.
Paul Jacob: It’s also that longevity and that entrenchment is what allows people to hide that corruption. Term limits is not going to make bad people good, but it does really remove a lot of the ability to do corrupt things and get away with them. I know that in a number of the states that passed term limits they had huge problems with speakers and senate presidents and other politicians and corruption. Some of them were found out, and that led to the term limit effort. Some of them weren’t found out until after term limits took effect, and because of the changes people pointed out, “Hey, so and so has been …” All of a sudden their dirty doings were found out by folks.
Paul Jacob: In Arkansas, it’s interesting that the corruption that has happened just recently, they’ve had seven legislators who’ve been either indicted or convicted of fraud, but that was spurred by a guy who pushed the weakening of term limits in Arkansas in a very phony amendment. All of a sudden they got 16 years, which is hardly a term limit. I think that there’s a connection there. I think that the people who wanted to be corrupt wanted a longer time period to be corrupt in. When they got it by hook and by crook, they then went to town. There’s a huge impact.
Paul Jacob: Entrenched politics is going to get you a lot of corruption. When you have turnover, it’s like spring cleaning. You’re going to find the corrupt places. I know Massachusetts where they passed a term limits initiative but the court threw it out, they had, I don’t know if it’s still true, but the last three speakers in a row went to prison. Illinois, it’s legendary how much corruption they’ve had. Term limits is a great friend to stopping corruption.
Scott Tillman: Certainly is.
Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. Every week we offer a quick and easy action item for our listeners. Are you ready to take the next step and sign up as a US Term Limits volunteer? We’re looking for people who can spend an hour or more per week working from home helping to end political careerism everywhere. Are you good at social media? Can you help get candidates to sign pledges, researching and coordinating events?
Philip Blumel: Please go to termlimits.com/volunteer and fill out the form. We’ll contact you with ideas and invite you to our weekly volunteer conference call. Thank you. We’ll be back next week.
Stacey Selleck: The revolution isn’t being televised. Fortunately, you have the No Uncertain Terms Podcast.
Philip Blumel: USTL.