The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

Enough already. Congress has had its chance. The bills masquerading as campaign reform are little more than incumbent protection acts. Even if they become law, the changes will be cosmetic at best. At worst the nation will again be deluded into believing that the system has been fixed. And the system stinks. Congress has developed into a House of Lords, a ruling elite insulated from accountability to all but the interests who spend lavishly to win its attention.

If real reform is beyond the capacity of members of Congress, the only option left for the public is to kick them out. That is exactly what a number of serious people are trying to do. At least a third of the states are actively considering a constitutional amendment limiting service in the House or Senate to twelve years.

Term limitation is not a new idea. The Continental Congress precluded members from serving longer than three years in any six-year period. More recently, Presidents Truman and Eisenhower advocated a cutoff, as did the 1988 Republican Party platform. First-time candidates, too, often warm to the notion, but most back off after election. For addiction to office, Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini takes the prize. A staple of DeConcini's successful 1988 campaign for a third six-year term was his claim that he could better fight for a twelve-year limitation if he was in the Senate for 18 years.

The premise of limitation is simple: if there must be life after Congress, then maybe, finally, its members will consider the national interest before their own re-election. The idea is analogous to California's famous Proposition 13, the 1978 law that restricted property taxes by rallying voters around a catchy slogan: the best way to keep legislators from spending money is not to give it to them in the first place.

Critics of limitation rightly say that not all old blood is bad blood. Many, perhaps most, members of Congress are qualified and competent -- individually. But together, as an institution, they are paralyzed. Expeditious action on Capitol Hill is reserved for nonsensical commemorative resolutions like "National Prom Graduation Kickoff Day." Important issues -- the deficit, education reform, health care -- are either ducked or shunted to powerless commissions for study. Contrivances like automatic spending cuts substitute for judgment.

But a twelve-year limit might increase influence peddling rather than reduce it, claim the naysayers. To ensure rewarding employment once their terms expire, members of Congress would remain in thrall to the interests that already control them. Maybe so. Yet the Executive Branch has successfully limited the revolving-door syndrome. Restricting postcongressional work in a similar fashion would not be impossible.

It is true that limitation might create an even less desirable group of unresponsive incumbents -- the 31,000 congressional staffers whose power is already outsized. But freed from the never-ending necessity for political fund raising, legislators might actually find the time to lead rather than follow their staffs.

Term limitation may not take us to the promised land. On closer inspection, it may even be a misguided dream. Still, the threat of a limit on congressional service could be just the weapon necessary to generate real campaign reform and maybe even force the enactment of public financing of ) congressional elections. Nothing else has done the trick. Scandal, disgust and decreasing voter participation -- all predicted to energize change -- have failed. It may be that nothing can, or ever could, concentrate a Congressman's mind more than the prospect of losing his job forever.