By John Tamny via RealClearPolicy,
A North Carolina lawmaker recently bilaterally passed a congressional term restrictions resolution. Tar Heel State is third in 2024 (joining Louisiana and Tennessee) to make a historic leap.
The momentum of voters favors limiting the length of service for congressionally elected people. Which is an important step towards better times ahead.
To understand why, just stop and consider voters’ contempt for Congress. This is well known. The latest polls from 2024 show that the congressional approval rating is in the range of 19%.
Less well-known is voters’ support for congressional term limits. A recent Pew poll found that 86% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans favor congressional term limits. Voter dissatisfaction with Congress and support for term restrictions are reportedly linked.
To understand why, readers should never forget that being elected to Congress has little to do with success while in Congress. Those who want elections often promise “change” and all sorts of plans aimed at “throwing out the thugs” while disrupting “business as usual.” No matter if the voter base fluctuates right or left, people want to be told that their vote will bring about change. Only to make reality smile with the agents of possible change.
After being sworn in, the newly elected people in Congress quickly realize that they are making little or no difference. And they don’t do it because power in Congress is in the hands of very few, and very few achieve that power because of the proven ability to cooperate well and raise money for those they promised to throw out in the first place. Only for the status quo, which has caused an increasing growth of government to trample underfoot those who promise change.
It is said that time in Congress will change the politician. The analysis is upside down. To put it more realistically, politicians who can be consistently re-elected to reflect their evolution from a reformer who doesn’t reform anything becomes a politician who is capable of doing things, based on the well-founded view that power rarely finds its way to those who vote against everything, who want to change the way things are done, or both. Look at former congressman Ron Paul if you’re confused.
Which explains why term restrictions are so necessary. What limits congressional terms limits time in Congress, which means that the biggest feature of term limits is that they would alter elected incentives.
Precisely because three terms is not enough time for most congressmen to accumulate power, the desire to acquire power decreases. In other words, those who arrive in Washington with reform have less time or reason to become the kind of politician they arrived to neuter in Washington.
Therefore, it is hoped that Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee will be a signal of the trend. People who apply for a high position are not inherently bad people, but the desire to be in high office brings out the bad in them. Take another look at the congressional approval rating.
The good news is that a solution to voters’ contempt for Congress and congressmen can be found in term restrictions. Their absence is currently rocking the incentives of those who arrive in Washington with good intentions, but who quickly realize that they need to put aside their idealistic paths if they want to live even a fraction of the idealism they were first elected.
John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, president of the Parkview Institute, senior research fellow at Market Institute, and senior economic advisor at Applied Finance Advisors (www.appliedfinance.com). His next book is The Deficit Delusion: Why Everything Left, Right and Supply Side Tell You About the National Debt Is Wrong.
