Will Term Limits Fix Congress?
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Congressional candidate Bill Lynch is hoping to succeed where past generations of reformers have failed—get a constitutional amendment passed that would institute term limits for members of Congress.
“I’m running to change the way Washington operates. What we have now and have had for far too long is a policy-making process bogged down by partisanship and too heavily influenced by the omnipresence of lobbyists and special interests,” Lynch said yesterday.
Lynch proposed a 12-year term limits on members of Congress—or two terms in the Senate and six terms in the House of Representatives.GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
It came as the first major public policy proposal of his campaign and was unveiled the day before the first debate among the four Democratic candidates for the First District seat, which will be held 7 p.m. tonight on Channel 12.
“I firmly believe there is a sense of entitlement which greatly influences career politicians and grows the longer they are in office,” Lynch said. “If you can’t go to Washington and solve real problems in 12 years or less you shouldn’t be sent there in the first place. All Rhode Islanders should be asking themselves why anyone running for office wouldn’t pledge to term limit themselves.”
As far as reforms go, this will be one of the toughest ones to achieve, a fact which was not lost on Lynch. Creating term limits would require a constitutional amendment—which two thirds of both houses of Congress and three fourths of the state legislatures would have to approve.
But even if he is unable to pass term limits, Lynch promised that he would limit himself to 12 years in Congress.
The three other Democratic candidates for the seat yesterday said there were better ways to fix Washington.
David Cicilline said the key was to break the connection between money and politics. He called for increased public financing of campaigns—through a bill know as the Fair Elections Now Act—and a lifetime ban on ex-Congressmen serving as lobbyists.
Lynch said he too supported the ban and “fair campaign financing.”
David Segal also endorsed the Fair Election Act and said reformers should try that first. “If we pass fair elections now and voters still feel the same frustrations they feel today around incumbent power, at that point I would be happy to consider term limits,” Segal said.
Anthony Gemma, meanwhile, criticized Lynch for promising major reform, regardless of whether voters have approved of it or not. If elected, he said he would create a Web site that would allow voters to track his performance in Congress. If he fails to live up to their standards, Gemma said he would term limit himself.
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