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The movement to limit political terms is steamrolling through American politics. Voters have approved term limits for Congressmen in each of the fifteen states where referenda have been held, with votes averaging over 66 percent in support, and another four to ten states will permit their citizens to vote on congressional term limits this November. If past elections and current polls are any indication, these proposals also will pass easily. In addition, eighteen states and hundreds of cities and counties across the country have adopted term limits for state and local officials.
Such substantial public support suggests widespread distaste for careerism in politics, as well as a conviction that continual infusion of fresh blood into the federal legislature will be good for both the Congress and the country. Support for term limits extends to significant majorities of diverse demographic groups: polls show that majorities of men, women, blacks, whites, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all favor term limits, typically by 60 percent or better. (New York Times/CBS survey of 1,515 adults, April 1990.) Such politically diverse figures as Ed Koch, Doug Wilder, Ralph Nader, Paul Tsongas, and George Will support term limits; over 100 Members of Congress have signed a discharge petition to force a vote in the House of Representatives on a constitutional amendment; and both Ross Perot and numerous United We Stand America chapters have made term limits a central goal. The United States Supreme Court has preempted a major argument of opponents -- that term limits are clearly unconstitutional -- by accepting a state case for review. Regardless of the outcome of the case, however, term limits are here to stay as an important issue on the American political landscape.
Term limits are a vital political reform that would bring new perspectives to Congress, mandate frequent legislative turnover, and diminish incentives for wasteful election-related federal spending that currently flourish in a careerist congressional culture.
When Americans are polled about their respect for the people in charge of their major institutions, Congress consistently comes out next to the bottom. (Law firms are the only group that the poll identifies as more unpopular than Congress. Louis Harris and Associates, "Confidence in Institutions" poll, 1966-1993.) By substantial majorities, Americans have fixed firmly on term limits as the solution to problems in Congress, and will not easily be persuaded to change their minds. In one case, pollsters -- after asking about subjects' views on term limits -- gave four leading arguments against them; after the subjects heard these arguments, their support for term limits rose from 71 percent to 74 percent. (Americans Talk issues poll, January 1994.) Moreover, in contrast to other issues which are initially popular but fade under criticism, term limits are supported in actual voting nearly as strongly as in initial polls.
Skepticism about and distaste for long-term political careerism are central to the American experience. Term limits were contained in America's first governing document, the Articles of Confederation; they do not appear in the Constitution primarily because its drafters saw them as "entering into too much detail" for a short document. (John H. Fund, "Term Limitation: An Idea Whose Time Has Come," Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 141, October 30, 1990.) Several modern Presidents, including Truman and Eisenhower, have supported congressional term limits. Since the Constitution was amended in 1951 to limit Presidents to two terms, many political scientists have observed that congressional term limits could cure the imbalance between these two branches of the federal government.
As a political movement, term limits first achieved statewide success in September 1990 when Oklahoma opened the floodgates for statewide referenda by limiting the terms of its state legislators. Two months later, Colorado became the first state to place term limits on its congressional delegation. California, however, because of its size and influence on the rest of the nation, by its 1990 action in limiting the terms of state legislators may have been more influential in laying the groundwork for the victories that were to follow in 1992.
That year, fourteen more states passed term limit referenda the same day they helped elect a new President. In each of these fourteen states, term limits received more votes than did Bill Clinton; when added together, term limits received more votes in fourteen states than Ross Perot did nationwide. The appeal of limiting the terms of elected officials is also evident in the passage of term limits laws for hundreds of cities and counties across the country, including Los Angeles and New York City.
Although opponents have attempted to create mass movements to fight term limits, they have been singularly unsuccessful because of term limits' widespread popularity. The term limits movement shows signs of becoming in the 1990s what the tax revolt became in the 1970s: a popular movement which politicians ignore at their peril. Although numerous state legislatures have dealt with term limits, to date only Utah's has successfully passed a bill (in March 1994), and a state referendum drive is currently under way there to correct what some activists see as weaknesses in the measure. More typically, state legislatures have resorted to various maneuvers in order to sidestep term limits. Last year in New Hampshire, the House successfully passed a term limits measure, but the Senate added a "killer amendment" that emasculated the legislation. The New Jersey House also passed a term limits measure in 1993, but the state Senate, relying on an advisory opinion from its in-house counsel that term limits are unconstitutional, refused to vote on the bill. In Wyoming, some members of the state legislature unsuccessfully attempted to amend the term limits referendum already passed by the voters by adding a proviso that term limits would not go into effect until every state in the Union passed them.
Legislative resistance to term limits is in sharp contrast with private citizens' strong support for them. Texas Republican Jim Tallas, a state legislator who bottled up a term limits measure in a subcommittee he chaired, was ousted in a March 1994 primary when his challenger, who made Tallas's opposition to term limits the center of his campaign, received 71 percent of the vote. The intensity of citizen support for term limits was demonstrated most recently in Nebraska after a May 1994 decision by the state supreme court voiding a successful term limits initiative on a technicality. Despite the fact that organizers had only nine weeks to gather signatures to place a second initiative on the November ballot, the names rolled in: over 60,000 in one week alone. As a result, Nebraskans almost certainly will re-enact term limits this fall. Speculation about whether the Supreme Court will find that state-imposed term limits on Members of Congress are constitutional diverts attention from the real story: a nationwide grassroots movement that has won popular votes in fifteen of fifteen states, has convinced a state legislature to pass them in a sixteenth (Utah), and almost certainly will expand its reach this November to as many as ten more states. This movement is animated by the conviction that the American people have lost control of their government but can take it back by using the most direct means available to control their elected representatives: frequent, mandated rotation that ensures they are truly of -- not just from -- their communities.
The only serious opponents of term limits are incumbent politicians and the special interests -- particularly labor unions -- that support them. The specter of term limits creates powerful emotional reactions in opponents, at least two elected legislators (one the chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on elections) having publicly compared the term limits movement to Nazism. Such overheated rhetoric indicates both the threat that term limits poses to established special interests and the urgency of the battle for them.
It is clear that special interests do not believe term limits will help them. Among the major contributors to an anti-term limits campaign in Michigan, for instance, were Chrysler Corporation, Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan, Michigan Bell Telephone Company, Detroit Edison Company, Southern California Edison Company, The Coastal Corporation, Kellogg Company, USX Corporation, and Pacific Telesis Group (Norman Leahy, "Corporate Interests: Why Big Business Hates Term Limits," U.S. Term Limits Foundation, Term Limits Outlook Series, Vol II, No. 1 (March 1993).) -- all large, heavily regulated businesses. Their unlikely allies were a coalition of unions, such as the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, the Michigan Education Association, and the AFL-CIO, who rely on specific forms of government intervention in labor markets. All these groups' efforts were coordinated by Debbie Dingell, wife of Michigan Democrat and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell. A similar assortment of regulated industries and unions that fought term limits in Washington State was spearheaded by Heather Foley, the spouse and unpaid chief of staff of Speaker of the House Tom Foley.
Special interests oppose term limits because they do not want to lose their valuable investments in incumbent legislators. Many are organized to extract programs, subsidies, and regulations from the federal government -- to use the law, in other words, as a lever to benefit their own constituencies or harm their rivals. The zero-sum transfer economy from which skilled lobbyists profit -- as well as their own high-paying jobs -- will be decimated by term limits that force lobbyists to relearn the priorities of new Members and make arguments on the merits, not on the strength of personal connections. The number of groups listed in the Encyclopedia of Associations has quadrupled in the last four decades from fewer than 5,000 in 1956 to over 20,000 today as special interests have taken advantage of legislators' vulnerability to proposals that concentrate benefits but disperse costs. Such growth in lobbies and organizations is anything but a sign of democratic vigor.
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