We have all heard of the dissatisfaction of the people with the representatives in Washington….polls show that it is an accurate assumption and yet the people do not seem to be willing to do anything about it……they bitch about the influence money has and that is the biggest bitch of all……
But what causes the influence of money? Some say the longevity of the representatives is the cause……incumbents are re-elected about 90% of the time……and to be re-elected it takes money and then that brings us back to the influence of money…..corporations and industries and sectors donate millions if not billions to candidates that can be useful in the corporations business dealings…….
There has been a move to term limits for the representatives…..that is to set a limit on the number of years that they could be in the US Congress as a representative of the people…..but what of term limits?
According to open congress:
Many argue that career politicians have negative implications for democracy. Some cite the fact that since the end of World War II, incumbents have been reelected a very high percentage of the time. In the House, for instance, the re-election rate for incumbents was 93 percent from 1952-2000.[1] It was only marginally lower in the Senate, as it averaged 74 percent from 1946-64, 76% between 1966-1984 and 87.4% from 1986-1998.[1] The cause for this, according to some, is that while incumbents must always be reelected, they enjoy certain advantages over challengers. For example, they typically have greater name recognition and better opportunities to raise large amounts of campaign money.[1] These advantages, some argue, deter potential candidates from challenging incumbents, leading to elections that do not truly feature high quality choices for the electorate. Term limits, therefore, help ensure that citizens will frequently have new choices when selecting their leaders.[1]
This idea became popular in the 1990’s, but lost some of its luster, but now is the time for a resurrection of the idea….Congress is at an all time low approval rating…..back in 1994/95 there was a growing move toward term limits…..but there is a catch to term limits……
On May 22, 1995, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in U.S. Term Limits v. Thorton that states could not adopt term limits for federal legislators (22 states had done so by this point). Doing so would require a Constitutional Amendment.[1] Given that the amendment had already failed by a wide margin, and that the newly-elected Congress had several other initiatives for which it intended to pursue, the idea of term-limits soon faded.
There is the catch……thanx to Federalism term limits cannot be handled on the state level it can only be through a constitutional amendment and there is the rub……which of the representatives that is benefiting through the lack of term limits will step up and offer it up as an amendment?
We can bitch as much as we want…but as it stands now….we can do NOTHING but bitch….we are stuck with this system of allowing cash to run the country while the people stand by as the spectator…..
There are organizations out there that are facing this issue…the problem is they are on the fringe and few people really care at this point….this is a problem that can be solved……but it takes a village to want to change things…..and unfortunately, Americans are NOT there yet….for it will take participation and the people are happy to vote once and then be a spectator……
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