Congressional Term Limits

Before you can discuss U.S. Congressional term limits intelligently, you must first return to the Constitutional Conventional of 1787, and to the Founding Fathers intentions when writing the U.S. Constitution. In the writings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and most others founders, they believed that they were writing a Constitution for a society of moral and virtues people. John Adams believed this when he wrote:

“Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of another.”

I believe that this statement applies to both the governed and the governors. When self-interest, self-advancement and self-preservation become the motivation of our elected officials or of those who are working to get them elected, than the moral and virtues basis for their service is gone. Yet we still have career politicians at every level of our system catering to special interest, regardless of the repercussions to the whole of society. This shows up in the crazy programs like Cash for Clunkers (your kidding right), non-simulative Stimulus Bills, no-significant pollution reduction Cap and Trade bills and yes-even purposed Coastal Area Flood/Wind Insurance Reform subsidized by good old Uncle Sam. What do all these programs have in common? They all favor some portion or group of society, while penalizing the rest with the cost and no benefit. Yet we continue to re-elect those same politicians, hoping that one-day it will be our turn to receive that special interest project that will benefit us.

Here is just one example: Lets say there are 350 million people in the US today, (that’s an estimate from several sources of what the 2010 census may show) and if we assume that 40% of those folks don’t pay tax’s (purported from both parties all over the news), than that leaves about 210 million folks paying tax’s. Now lets allow that 10% of us pays about 66% of all taxes, that leaves about 33% of all monies spent in congress for the less than $250K crowd.

Now lets take that Cash for Clunkers program. It will likely end up costing $3 billion before it’s done. Some quick math tells us that the less than $250K taxpayers will end up with about one third or about $5 bucks of that bill. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot, but of course that money has to be borrowed from China so there’s going to be some interest on it as well, by the time it gets paid off in 20??.

Now not everyone is going to get the opportunity to use this program and many I suspect don’t want to. So is right or fair for the government to force you to go to your neighbors and give them money so they can buy a new car under the auspices of saving fuel or more likely a second bailout of the GM and Chrysler corporations’. Here’s the rub, if its $5 bucks for a Cash for Clunkers program, what is for say an $800 billion stimulus, or a trillion dollar healthcare bill, etc. etc. etc.  All of these are a penalty on the many for the advancement of a few.

The founders believed that service to our nation was an honor and that unless absolutely necessary a representative should not even draw any pay, except to maintain their family while away serving in congress. That’s right, they were supposed to keep a job back home and provide for their family from that, rather than become career politicians. Where did that spirit go? I believe Pres. Obama is correct, the playing field has to be evened out. The problem is, I believe, they are all on the wrong field.

To effect change in congress we have to be able to remove these career politicians and replace them with honorable folks that are following the intent of the founders when they created this great country out of a wilderness and war. Since you can not legislate morals and virtues, a term limit for all public offices and especially the U.S. Congress has to be established to insure that when the folks fall asleep or let self interest rather than virtue and moral thought guide their voting decisions, politicians can’t capitalize on that and create an oligarchy for themselves and thereby U.S. If you agree please vote accordingly.