e-commentary

Senators Byrd, Stevens and Inouye (and others) haul billions of dollars of pork to West Virginia, Alaska and Hawaii (and other locales).  Some say that the citizens of those states can exercise the franchise and limit their terms of office.  However, the citizens of these states want the pork.  The problem is that the citizens of other states cannot vote to get politicians from offending states out of office and away from the public trough.

Term limits are necessary to reduce abusive spending, among other public maladies.  Term limits of six two-year terms in the House and two six-year terms in the Senate balance the desires for institutional memory and new ideas.  The professional politician will be limited to two dozen years in the Congress.  The 22^nd Amendment states in pertinent part that: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice . . . .”  The consummate professional pol is limited to three decades ((2 x 6) + (6 x 2) + (4 x 2)) at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.  Most individuals focus their careers on either the House (Sam Rayburn) or the Senate (Strom Thurmond) and would be limited by these limits.  These limits are hardly restrictive, yet they provide some outside parameters.

Bumper sticker of the week:

Stop Repeat Offenders
Don’t Re-elect Them

This entry was posted on May 14, 2007 at 9:22 am and is filed under Politics, Term Limits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.