Jacob Pollicove
Dr. Skulley
POL 101
7 December 2017
The Negative Effect of Term Limits on American Government
Term limits sound rather appealing at first encounter. When the average person hears the phrase, “term limits” they are often happy. The idea conjures up an image of a corrupt politician being forced to give up their elected office after a certain amount of time, and people are happy because they think that term limits are
the best thing to happen to the American government since George Washington was elected president. However, after that initial glow fades from the idea of term limits, many problems come to light. Term limits have a way of completely obliterating institutional memory. Institutional memory is a key concept that is absolutely vital to the preservation and success of the government. Secondly, term limits are proven to be bad for the economy. When politicians are subject to term limits, they worry less about being financially responsible, and may support heavier spending bills that can cause budget deficits. Term limits also tend to prevent some types of goals from being accomplished by elected officials. An elected official subject to term limits has a short amount of time to accomplish what they wish to do in office, and in some cases, it may prove to be prohibitive when it comes to the execution of long term projects. Therefore, this paper will argue that term limits, while well intentioned, have an overall negative effect on the government, economy, and people of the United States of America.
Term limits do exactly what they say they do; they limit the amount of time a politician can hold a particular office. One of the biggest problems with this is that when term limits are in place, no politician really holds their office for a long enough period of time to gain an understanding of the deeper concepts and situations that can occur in the office. When this occurs, many different, more severe issues can occur. One prime example of institutional memory being helpful is during the period when the government is coming up on the deadline to pass a budget or continuing resolution before they have to go into a shutdown. At that time, younger, less experienced members of Congress look to the older members with longer tenures who have dealt with that situation in the past. Those older members know what does and does not work, and they know how to negotiate. If term limits are enacted, those longer tenures won’t exist, and the old relationships between longer tenured representatives won’t be there to help the government avert a crisis. Institutional memory is passed down from one generation of representatives to the next over a long period of time. It isn’t something that can be condensed into a PowerPoint slideshow or passed down over dinner.
When a new representative is elected to office, they usually make contact with either the official leaving office or a member of that official’s staff. This is when key information is passed down to them. This passing on of institutional memory can only be truly successful if representatives are not term limited. Representatives can make more connections, learn more, and accomplish more when they are not bound by term limits. By extension, this results in the institutional memory being stronger, and the people leaving office have more knowledge and experience that they can share with their replacement.
In the Constitution of the United States it is written,
“The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, (chosen by the Legislature thereof,) for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote. they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year”
That section of the Constitution sets the guideline for how elections occur. The Constitution makes no allusion to term limits, nor does it even hint at the idea in any way. That is because the Founding Fathers wanted American elections to be free elections, with the people facing no barriers to casting their ballot for the person whom they deemed most qualified to serve them. Term limits impede free elections from occurring because even if a majority of the voters in a territory governed by term limits believe that one candidate is the best option for them, they cannot vote for them if they have served the total number of terms that the limit says they may serve. The argument can, and should, therefore be made that term limits cause elections to not be entirely free, and are a violation of the Constitution.
Many people really love the prospect of term limits. They think of corrupt politicians who began their public service years and years ago when televisions were black and white and drive-in movies were all the rage, and then they look at these old people now with gray hair and thick glasses. Those same representatives are still going around Washington, and still serving the same constituencies that they have served for the past thirty or forty years. Voters get an image in their head of these men who they make scapegoats for everything that has gone wrong in their lives, and they decide that because of them, no one should be allowed to serve for that long. In the 1990s, Republicans were the main proponents of term limits, as they believed that they would see gains for their party if people were forced out of seats. Research has since proven however, that Republicans made no gains at the state level in states that implemented term limits. When these gains did not show up within a few years, many states began to realize that term limits may not be the answer that they had sought. However, the Republican party continued their attempts to convince the people of the United States that term limits were the answer to political inefficiency and corruption. Even back in the 1990s, Republicans were utilizing private organizations to spread their beliefs to the masses. “The vast majority of term limits activists were aligned with Republicans and popular support for the reform was much stronger among Republican identifiers than Democratic ones. In fact, much of the term limits movement was funded by tax-exempt organizations sponsored by Republicans.
Term limits can also cause a variety of problems for the economy. Many states that enacted term limits saw higher levels of spending in their states after term limits went into effect. This effect is the complete opposite of what supporters of term limits claim, asserts H. Abbie Erler. “Supporters of legislative term limits often claim that they will lower state spending levels. Using fiscal data from 48 states from 1977 to 2001, this paper finds little support for this assertion. Instead, this analysis finds that states with term limits have higher spending levels than states without term limits.” This increase in spending occurs because politicians will not be faced with another election once they have reached the limit set for their office, and therefore do not necessarily need to have a good fiscal record. They do not have to answer to voters, and so they seek to complete their agenda with less regard for fiscal security than if they would have to face the voters again. The worst part about this is that supporters of term limits really believe that term limits lower spending. Granted, those beliefs are not completely unfounded, as proponents of term limits believed that by removing the possibility of reelection they could force politicians to help everyone, and not just a group of constituents who could help them get reelected. (Erler, p.480) That argument makes a bit of sense, but when term limits are enacted we see a severe lack of fiscal responsibility from the politicians who are limited in their service by term limits that dictate when they will be out of office.
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U.S. Constitution. Art. 1, Sec. 3