Extend term limits?

Only Representatives have 2 year term limits.

Senators get 6 years.

I realise that, but it's still incredibly short terms. After all the House still has considerable power. Now I may be getting it a bit wrong since I'm used to the UK system where our upper house has membership for life and has very little power (the Commons can force a law though the Lords if it really wants to).

As our term limits stand right now, I don't like the idea. I think that it could hamstring any sort of attempt at important legislation that actually takes time.

Here's essentially my number one goal on this subject: There are career politicians who are bought and paid for, and squelch the attempts of good and honest people who generally want to make our country better. They work against the good. Now shit happens, there will be bad senators, and that's just life. But I don't want the bad senators to be in the senate for life. I want them to be able to do 20 years, and then be forced to leave and never hold a position in the Senate or the House ever again. Now, the presidency? I would say that's fine, to be able to run for president, if you've been able to keep your nose clean enough for 20 years as a senator to where people will vote for you, nobody can say you don't have the experience for it.

Do your 20, and commit whatever damage or help you can do for or to the state, and then bow out. Ancient dinosaur politicians who are living in the past contribute largely to the problems of today, and it needs to stop.

What are your views on someone that doesn't complete all twenty and then runs for a different position? I'm guessing they would have that time also added to the twenty limit.

Also I agree that positions such as governor or president shouldn't have this applied. They have limits already.

If they were bad Senators they wouldn't be reelected.

And What's the difference between 1 bad senator serving for 36 years, and 3 bad senators serving 12 years each?

And I'd like to point out so of America's greatest politicians were career politicians.

Bull.If anything younger politicians are bigger source of our problem. I'd take older statesmen like Richard Lugar, John Mc Cain, and Joe Lieberman over younger politicians like Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Allan West, and Sarah Palin any day of the week.

edited 29th Dec '12 9:02:00 PM by DeviantBraeburn

There are plenty of bad senators still in office. Somehow Feinstein has been getting re-elected since 92'. Boxer almost as long.

edited 30th Dec '12 12:48:01 AM by Barkey

Why do you hate Feinst-...... This is about your guns isn't it.

edited 30th Dec '12 1:39:19 AM by DeviantBraeburn

Feinstein co-authored PIPA and was behind a bunch of other bad bills. I don't know anything about her stance on guns, though.

Feinstein is anti-gun, from my past reading of her Wikipedia page.

She's been, among other things, submitting new bill proposals to renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban since it expired in 2004. They don't get anywhere, but she's still pushing for it.

I could see why people wouldn't like her besides her position on gun control...

edited 30th Dec '12 7:19:58 AM by TenTailsBeast

SOPA/PIPA are big parts that come to mind. Not going to say guns don't influence that part of my decision too, they do, but that isn't the sole reason.

edited 30th Dec '12 12:31:04 PM by Barkey

Just noting that our president pro tempore was a main sponsor of PIPA.

I don't know about term limits. While a nice idea in theory, it's probably more important to have other electoral reforms. I personally think, though, that each state should have the right to set term limits on its own congressional delegations. The state's people are the ones making the decision to elect.

I could see being in favor of limiting consecutive elections for House and Senate members. Perhaps not say 'you get elected once and then you have to take a break', but perhaps after a Senator gets elected twice they have to wait a term before they can serve again, or after three/four terms a house member has to do something else for a term.

Though I'm kind of of the opinion that six years is an absurd amount of time for any one person to be in office without having to defend their record.

But what I'd be MORE in favor of would be finding a way to limit or get rid of gerrymandering. That might very well be as big an issue for Senate and House elections as anything.

I thought that was the maximum and the UK parliament could be subject to reelection sooner if the Prime Minister calls for it or under other circumstances.

My understanding is that Senators are supposed to have longer terms than the President or Representatives specifically so that they can focus more attention on the needs of the nation and their constituents, and less to being re-elected, while Representatives is so short specifically because they are supposed to be the direct conduit between their voters and the government, and therefore the people need the opportunity to vote them out sooner rather than later.

We're moving to fixed team parliaments now. Or at least we were, it may have gone the way of the boundary changes.

The Fixed Term Parliaments Act was given Assent in September 2011

edited 31st Dec '12 8:04:17 AM by TheBatPencil

And it does remove a lot of power from the sitting Prime Minister, who could basically choose the election time according to their popularity.

Two years is ridiculous, though. I could understand a Rep. having a three year term (half the length of a Senatorial term), but two years? No wonder the U.S. is permanently in an election cycle.