David C. King

Boston Sunday Herald
April 10, 1994

Term limits for politicians are wildly popular, and 15 states are preparing to kick their legislators out of Washington in a few years. In Massachusetts, the legislature is under pressure to hop on the term limits bandwagon. And across the country, supporters of term limits are turning their attention to tinkering with the U.S. Constitution. Let's hope they fail. The loudest voices shouting "throw the bums out" are not citizen reformers, but the most interested of special interests.

We already have term limits. They're called elections. For all the talk about entrenched incumbents, turnover in legislatures is much higher than you may think. In the last national elections, voters sent 110 new members to the U.S. House of Representatives. That's more than 25 percent of the whole House. More than 50 percent of the Congress has been elected since 1986. Most of today's lawmakers were elected during the Reagan and Bush presidencies, not the Carter and Johnson presidencies, as term limit supporters want you to believe. Those are the facts. In Washington, DC, fewer than 1 in 10 members ever stay as long as 20 years. Turnover in the Massachusetts legislature is even faster.

Some argue that even 1 in 10 long-serving members is too many because power comes with seniority. But it is through the few senior members, both Democrats and Republicans, that a reservoir of policy expertise keeps the executive branch in check. Most studies show that long-serving members are less likely to pander to short-term whims and more likely to take a national view.

Why is it that so many people are clamoring for term limits when we are already restricting incumbency in precisely the way that the Founding Fathers hoped we might, which is through the ballot box? Think about two things.

First, people do not spontaneously clamor for anything, much less clamor enough to get something on more than a dozen state ballots. Here in Massachusetts, term limits supporters have mustered 110,000 signatures to put the issue on November's ballot. That takes organization and a lot of money. The money for this campaign has not come from a large number of citizens frustrated with government but from a handful of wealthy players underwriting "grassroots" efforts from ritzy offices in Washington, DC.

We do not know exactly where the money for Massachusetts term limits is coming from, but the experience of other states is instructive. Of the money raised to put term limits on the ballot in Michigan, for example, more than 90 percent of it came from outside the state. And the bulk of that money was laundered through front organizations controlled by two wealthy Libertarians, David and Charles Koch. That was the case in the state of Washington too, and you can be sure that the same groups have been busy in Massachusetts.

Second, to the people bankrolling the ballot initiatives, the problem in government is not that there are so many entrenched incumbents but that there are so many entrenched Democrats. Partisan politics is just beneath the veneer of citizen outrage. Why are David and Charles Koch bankrolling term limits initiatives? Because they're upset that the Libertarian party has not done better at the polls. And what's the best way to do better at the polls? Eliminate the competition. That logic holds for Republicans as well. Last year 45 members of Congress pledged to support federal term limits. It shouldn't surprise you that 42 are Republicans.

By forcing Democrats to retire, the financial backers of term limits are trying to lock into the law what they have failed to win at the ballot box. It is an electoral strategy that Republicans may come to regret when they again control a majority of the legislatures.

If federal term limits are upheld by the courts, Members of Congress from 15 states will be at a serious disadvantage relative to the rest of the country. Few if any of the states with term limits will ever again have one of their own chairing a powerful committee. Never again will those states be represented in the senior ranks of party leaders. Voters who cast their lot for term limits chose at the same time to hobble their state delegations in Washington.

The Massachusetts term limits initiative isn't just aimed at Congress. It's aimed at your local representatives on Beacon Hill as well. State and local political offices are the training grounds for tomorrow's leaders. They're the fountainhead of democracy. The term limits movement is telling capable young adults throughout the Bay State to stay away from public service, there's no future in it.

Millions of people support term limits out of a genuine anger about government. We all have good reasons to be angry. Gridlock is rampant. Special interest money is showered on incumbents. The deficit looms large. Millions of Americans are struggling without basic health care. How would term limits help solve any of these problems? Certainly not by removing the most able legislators from office and restricting the right of citizens to choose.

Mandated term limits are no solution. They run counter to the designs of our Founding Fathers, and we already have relatively high turnover rates in our legislatures (despite what you've been told all these years). Where, then, should we focus our anger? Focus on the real problems like entitlements, health care, the deficit, and campaign finance. These, not term limits, are the real challenges.