Is it time to limiting congressional terms as vital to our nation’s future?

Obtaining passage of that constitutional amendment is the waging of political war. Like a shooting war, it will change history—in this instance a vast change for the better—for the nation and our children and their unborn descendants.
We face the third millennium with a bankrupt country and an evaporating fiat dollar—the result of years of profligate congressional spending—the buying of our votes with our children’s money. We cannot survive with the gang of self-seeking big spenders we have in office now. The Congress we have is dysfunctional.
Present occupants of the luxurious seats in Congress become more insulated and isolated from reality with each passing year of their perceived life tenancy.
It is time to remind Members of Congress that we citizens put them there to serve the country, and not themselves. It is time to remind them that the government exists to serve the people, and not the politicians. We can ill afford a Model T Congress in a jet age.
It has been decades since members actually read what we pay them to vote on, leaving us at the whim of staffers who interpret for them. Staffers are now often the targets of big-time lobbyists.
What is desperately needed is the brand of public servants our founders, authors of the Constitution envisioned—the kind of statesmen who go to Congress to serve. These were to be citizen public servants who would go to Washington to serve their neighbors and their country for a limited time only. They would temporarily leave their citizen pursuits to serve briefly, bringing their everyday heartland common sense with them, then to return home to live among those neighbors after having completed their citizen responsibilities—to live under the laws they have just passed. Why should that sound so bizarre today?
In a country where Presidents can stay only eight years, these hangers on want lifetime tenure. We believe that six year limits in each chamber are adequate for the kind of citizen servants we seek, who see service in Washington as a duty, not a privilege.
Polls show that Americans want congressional term limitation by margins of three-to-one, even four-to-one. This is the issue that separates American citizens, who want to recapture their government, from a careerist-dominated Congress and its illegitimate bureaucratic offspring, the Beltway Elitists, who want to run our lives.
Congress, whose arrogant spending has bankrupted our nation and destroyed our currency, sets its own self-authored six-figure pay plus perquisites and pensions as if compensation were to be calculated based on its unbridled spending rather than on prudent governance. Indeed, our pandering Congress has created a counter-productive envy-based tax system which penalizes extra effort and success.
Congressional term limitation is the most important issue of our time, because the very survival of the country depends upon it. There is no alternative path to restore government to the people. There is no substitute for term limitation.
We now have a God-given chance, a once-only opportunity to change the direction in which our nation is headed. The American people are waiting to be led. If we citizens fail to seize this moment by providing the leadership to get term limits accomplished, then history will judge us harshly. Our children and their children will judge us harshly. We won’t get a second chance.
That leadership must come from us, the citizens. Now.
No nation can ever be greater than the combined character, integrity and virtue of its leaders. Where are character, integrity and virtue today?
The hour is late. Never in our history has the need been more desperate.

Perhaps the best example of a statutory term limit on a federal office is the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Passed by the Congress and ratified by the states in response to President Roosevelt's four terms in office, the Amendment limits the number of terms that a President of the United States can serve to two four-year terms.

I really couldn't agree with you more. It is time for American Citizens to take their country back. Presidents have gained too much power, and strayed from their original duty of being a figure representing the people and their choices and decisions. I am all for an overthrow etc., whatever it takes to get back to the basics of our beloved American Republic.

reply to post by USamf


I'm confused why the U.S., as a Republic, does not include a branch of government consigning power directly to the citizenry. The separation of powers is limited only to within the confines of government itself. Why not include a fourth? At the moment, the "vote" is the only tool at the disposal of an easily manipulated populace to redistribute power according to their values and political dispositions. We need more. We have judicial, legislative and executive. Since all power in any Republic is derived from its people, it should not be too remarkable to allow the people to have at least minimal control over all three of the aforementioned branches. You might say this would entail insidious interference on behalf of an uncontrollable public in the affairs of the state, however, this "second government" would be subject to the same principles of election that our first is similarly subject to. In this way, we the people could exert legal pressure on all three branches. A regularly convening Constitutional Congress would address the grievances of the common people, and attempt to reconcile differences, put to vote, between the people and the state. If you analyze the entire picture, the existence of up to eight or more unique branches of government are not only technically feasible; they are vital to the functioning of democracy in the Republic.

In Canada, where government changes so often, the bureaucracy of government is persuaded to remain neutral and value-free, so as not to punished by all the different, incoming administrations. In the U.S., bureaucrats who are not specifically accessory to the party in power are expelled from government immediately. This political neutrality in the state bureaucracy in Canada acts a barrier to lobbyists, who can not take advantage of congenial legal administrators at all levels of government had there been fewer elections. In Canada, lobbying is incredibly difficult, and only those with the absolute full support of the public have any shot of getting what they want. In Canada, one of the several unofficial branches of government is embodied in the political neutrality of the state bureaucracy, who explicitly make it their point they are no one's friends.

[edit on 15-3-2009 by cognoscente]