Forum Post: Term Limits Without Lifetime Perks For Elected Officials
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 9, 2011, 5:34 p.m. EST by george1
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If we enact term limitations ie. 4 years for senate and house seats we will effectively eliminate lifelong partnerships between corporations and congress. This recreates the public servant feature to these posts. The glory factor is reserved to those that have greatest impact.
Well Put. The mass majority of citizens no longer enjoy the benefits of a pension. Why should our elected servants! I appreciate the idea of increasing the members of congress, however, it would appear to complicate the election process as you suggested. Together we find the answers and solution
Don't forget the Supreme Court. It would be wise to allow the Supreme Court to only be able to hold the bench for 12 years or 3 presidential terms. We do not need a Supreme Court that remains stagnant as the country evolves, nor a blowhard on the bench that prevents democracy from reigning rather than championing it.
As for Senate and House seats, I would change the years to five year terms with term limits for the Senate. We need to keep the paradigm where the Senate seat up for grabs alternates, that way there is always a representative in office (we already have a zoo at campaign time, and do not need a bigger one.) We also may need to increase the amount of people elected to Congress owing to the fact that the number of representatives has not changed since before World War Two, and the U.S. population has gotten significantly larger.
The only perks I would leave intact would be very minor. A modest pension for the public servant if he makes less than $200,000 a year prior to taking office and otherwise I would keep the option for former presidents to be briefed on matters of National Security so that if his input is needed, it can be summoned (this worked out very well for Jack Kennedy when he consulted Ike Eisenhower on the Cuban Missile Crisis-it would be good to keep in case of a bigger SNAFU.)