the 105th Congress than in and other Congress elected since 1952,
“clearly, the voters have demonstrated their willingness to replace
members they believe are not adequately representing them (Archer 1).”
Conversely, Representative Kevin Brady (8th District, Texas)
believes that term limits are a good way to attain the goal of keeping
government “as near to the people as possible”, and showed this by
voting for H.J. Resolution 2 in order to limit House members to six
terms-twelve years- and Senate members to two terms-twelve years. From
Brady’s experience in the Texas legislature and in Congress, he feels
that “limiting members of the U.S. House equally to six terms provides
members ample time to represent their constituents effectively, while
preserving the original intent of a citizen-driven Congress.” By
rotation legislation, he hopes “to ensure…new ideas and fresh
citizens perspectives (Brady 1).” Another advocate of term limits,
Rep. Ron Paul (14th District, Texas) actually introduced the first
term limitation bill of the modern era and has voted in favor of each
bill introduced to limit Congressional terms to twelve years.
However, term limits only somewhat address the issue of “career
politicians.” To limit the lawmaking power of such individuals, Paul
aims to eliminate “perks like the pension system” in addition to
mandatory rotation-in-office (Paul 1).
In order to keep government “…as near to the people as
possible…”, imposing term limits on legislators is clearly an
invalid method to accomplish this goal. The founders purposely
excluded rotation-in-office from the Constitution because they felt no
need to include such a statement when voters already levy term limits
on congressmen through elections (Jackson-Lee 8). Congressional
privilege and power is derived from seniority. If states restrict
congressional tenure they ultimately place themselves in a weaker
political position of power relative to states who choose not to.