Trump’s right — we can’t ‘drain the swamp’ without term limits

On Tuesday, President Trump tweeted out his “full support” for enacting congressional term limits:

I recently had a terrific meeting with a bipartisan group of freshman lawmakers who feel very strongly in favor of Congressional term limits. I gave them my full support and endorsement for their efforts. #DrainTheSwamp

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 30, 2018

This isn’t the first time the president has publicly backed term limits. In the late stages of the 2016 campaign, then-candidate Trump proposed a constitutional amendment that would limit members of the House of Representatives to 6 years and senators to 12 years.

At the time, Trump’s proposal was wildly popular. According to a Rasmussen poll conducted in October 2016, 74 percent of likely voters supported enacting term limits for members of Congress, and just 13 percent were opposed.

{mosads}This is also an idea that has been around for quite some time. In its 1994 “Contract with America,” for example, the Republican Party promised to vote on a constitutional amendment which would have imposed 12-year term limits on all members of Congress, though the amendment failed to pass. The origin for this movement for term limits goes back well further.

Although the Constitution doesn’t provide for term limits for members of Congress or senators, originally it didn’t do so for the president, either. George Washington notably called it quits after two terms, which set the precedent for future presidents to do the same. This precedent remained in place until 1940, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to break with tradition and run for (and win) a third term. After Roosevelt won a fourth term in 1944 and died in office a few months later, the movement to make the two term limit law gained massive support. Congress passed the 22nd Amendment a couple years later in 1947 and the states ratified it in 1951.

At its root, the case for extending term limits to members of Congress is a populist one, running against the elitism which right now holds sway over much of the political establishment of both parties.

Trump backs effort to create congressional term limits https://t.co/V3auTyJ451 pic.twitter.com/poqfyIVCxu

— The Hill (@thehill) April 30, 2018

While elitists will argue against term limits by questioning the wisdom of new legislators and stressing the importance of having experienced legislators in office in order to tackle the complex policy challenges which inevitably arise each year, reality shows the problem with such an argument. While our present Congress is quite full of legislators with long records of service, it continues to prove ineffective at actually tackling its most basic of responsibilities, such as passing a budget or reining in out-of-control federal spending.

Meanwhile, all of the terrible downsides to career legislators without term limits are on full display. Senior members are able to commandeer most (if not all) of the most important committee memberships, where they can reward their donors while generally ignoring the most pressing policy concerns, since addressing them might negatively impact their reelection chances. The more enthusiastic newer members, on the other hand, are relegated to the back bench, where they are able to accomplish very little of import — at least until they prove their loyalty to the party by voting the party line and by raising the party millions of dollars. Corruption proliferates.

Enacting term limits is absolutely essential to break this status quo. By preventing members from running for reelection perpetually, party leadership would be in a state of constant flux, allowing new ideas to percolate to the top and new faces to challenge outdated conventions. Grassroots ideas that are generally rejected by the current establishment — like balancing the budget, returning education to local control, or even defunding abortion providers like Planned Parenthood — would no longer be squashed by intransigent lifers with outsized power and little accountability. And by taking away the threat of losing reelection — and the need to continuously fundraise — for a large class of Members every election cycle, Members would be freer to pursue bold agendas in order to spearhead much needed policy changes.

In 1994, and again in 2010 during the Tea Party wave, a number of candidates running for Congress took up this cause and promised to term limit themselves. Nevertheless, many still remain in Congress. Like George Washington’s idea, this is wonderful in principle, but worthless in practice. The problem, of course, is that self-imposed term limits force leaders who honor their promise — the good guys — to leave, while the career politicians remain in place. In order to be effective, term limits can’t be voluntary. They must become the law of the land.

President Trump and the American people are right: Term limits are absolutely necessary if we truly want to drain the Washington swamp. The only way to fix our broken system is to pass a Constitutional Amendment making term limits law. But do enough courageous legislators agree? And will the people prioritize this issue and punish career legislators who oppose this effort? This is where we have much work to do.

Terry Schilling is the executive director at American Principles Project, a conservative group dedicated to promoting human dignity through public policy.