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North Dakotans Approve Age Limit for Members of Congress
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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politics
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Term limits for congress and the senate are also needed , make it so that you can not serve more than 2 terms in any state or federal office. This would reduce the influence of career politicians and allow fresh ideas to be tried.
It would also limit effectiveness in an important and difficult job that requires potentially years of procedural understanding and relationship building to pass impactful legislation.
A company where every employee was “junior” would waste a lot of time and money.
This. I have no idea why it's a popular trope to just talk about "term limits" as if it would actually solve anything. For some reason, actual expertise at governing is frowned on, but I doubt the very people arguing for term limits would ever argue for term limits for a plumber, a dentist, a mechanic, a roofer...anyone up for having their teeth drilled by an "outsider"? I know I'm not.
Yeah, I have strongly mixed feelings on this. Perhaps we should intact term limits, but probably not as short as usually proposed and probably paired with something to limit outside influence. The common claim I hear is that with a more junior Congress they would be even more reliant on the parts of "government" that stick around longer, like lobbyists.
The call for term limits usually comes from the people who want (need?) government to be impotent and dysfunctional - typically echoing messages that very wealthy capitalists have injected into the public discourse.
Yes, it's a common talking point of the far right and when someone brings it up as some kind of magical solution to something it's a red flag. It might be that they are arguing in good faith for it, but haven't really thought it through...
The problem is all the legalized bribery. Having short-term whores in Congress won't change that at all, it would only give the illusion of change for the better. It would more likely make things far, far worse.
It requires years of procedural understanding because there's no term limits. There isn't benefit to that excessive procedure apart from making junior representatives lives more difficult. Congress can make their own rules, and they make them benefit those who have been there for 30 years. A term limited Congress can make rules that work better for them.
Except it would be reducing the influence of career politicians by increasing the influence of corporate plants. It would make political offices even more of a revolving door than they already are. Would also increase the number of people just going rogue on their last term because “what are you gonna do, not elect me again?”
A whole lot of other shit would need to change first before implementing term limits would make any sense to do. At the very least overturning the Citizens United decision and some sort of mechanism to help ensure that politicians actually govern according to the platform they run on. And arguably both of those things would do a lot more to help our current problems than term limits would…which means neither is ever going to happen.
Why would corporate influence increase with term limits? It's way easier to influence the same person for 30 years than a new person every 5-10 years.
Not when the new person goes straight from being on your payroll to being in office, then back to being on your payroll when they’re done.
I think these are separate issues and can be managed using different strategies. Corporate influence is about $$ and many different, constitutional remedies can be applied for that.
No they can't. Money is political speech. Thank you SCOTUS.
No. Absolutely not. The problem here is age, not politics as a career. This is how you get monolithic parties where the internal politics between unelected party officials and billionaires run the country.
Term limits? Why?