[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 57 (Tuesday, March 28, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3812-H3813]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              TERM LIMITS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCOLLUM. I have heard quite a bit of discussion our here today 
about all the pain that is going on. I have not seen much of it, quite 
frankly, in the first 100 days except the difficulty of spending the 
hours that it takes for us to write those programs into law, at least 
get them passed through the House and sent on to the Senate that we 
promised as Republicans in the campaign to do.
  As you know, I am sure my colleagues do, nothing that we have 
suggested is all that dramatic a departure except that we are sending 
things back to the States where I think, and most of us on this side 
think, that there is much greater wisdom about how to do those things 
than there is here in Washington, especially things like crime 
fighting, which is primarily local, and welfare which can be best 
handled by those back home who know how to do it.
  But the money and the resources are going back there. Nobody is going 
to be destitute because of what we are doing, a lot of hand wringing 
going on about what we have not gotten to. Well, gosh, we have done 
more in the first 100 days than any Congress in 50, 60, 70 years has, 
maybe in the history of this country.
  But I come to the point of what we are going to discuss today and 
tomorrow as the legislative agenda, and that is term limits.
  Some on the other side of the aisle, including a couple of the 
speakers this morning, have alluded to the idea somehow we are not 
going to be able to fulfill this part of the contract. I do not know if 
we are going to get to 290 votes, but I know if about 50 percent of the 
Democrats would help us, we would get there.
  We have 85 percent or better of the Republicans who are going to vote 
for term limits out here, hopefully vote for final passage. I believe 
they will on whatever version. But in order to succeed it takes two-
thirds of the Congress.
  We have only 230 Republicans. And quite a number, 30 or more, out of 
conviction really genuinely do not believe in term limits, are going to 
vote no.
  We need to get a balance on the other side. Fifty percent is at least 
what it is in the populous out there. Because with nearly 80 percent of 
the American public supporting term limits, we know that is evenly 
divided between Democrats and Republicans in the general public, but it 
has not been in this House.
  And maybe that is a reflection of why this is the first time in 
history we have had a term limits debate out here. The Democrats have 
controlled the U.S. House of Representatives for 40 consecutive years, 
and only with a lot of pressure in the last Congress did they even hold 
hearings in committee, let alone consider bringing a bill to the floor 
of the House for debate that would provide a constitutional amendment 
to limit the terms of House and Senate Members.
  It is time to make this change. It is time to do it deliberatively. 
And let's think about why for a minute.
  First of all, if we look back in history, the Founding Fathers of 
this country could not have envisioned when they wrote the Constitution 
the kind of full-time Congress we have today or the career orientation 
that Members have developed.
  If you think about it, Congressmen in the early days, in fact for the 
first 100- 
[[Page H3813]] plus years of our country, only served 1 or 2 months a 
year up here in Washington. And they went back home and did their 
businesses and did the ordinary things they do in the community. And, 
very frequently, they only served one or two terms. It was a rare 
exception for them to serve longer.
  Then beginning about the middle of this century, moving on until now, 
Congress became a full-time, year-around job, partly because the size 
and scope of the Federal Government became exceptionally big.
                              {time}  1300

  While I would like to reduce it, we are not going to immediately 
reduce it. The truth of the matter is, when that occurred there became 
a different breed of attitude in Congressmen here in the sense that men 
and women could not do the jobs back home. They basically had to give 
them up.
  Today, there are actually laws in the books that prohibit certain 
occupations like attorneys and accountants from practicing their 
professions, and most Members of Congress today have no outside 
earnings outside of those investments that a few may have.
  Mr. Speaker, today we have a career-oriented Congress, Congressmen 
who come here thinking that they have to give up a job. And many of 
them, for security reasons or otherwise, are looking to stay here for 
longer periods of time.
  That has been the pattern with committee chairmen, requiring you to 
be in service for 12, 15 years to be one, and sometimes committee 
chairmen serving for 15 or 20 years. That is wrong, and it has led to 
rather poor decisionmaking.
  Members seeking to make a career out of this place tend to want to 
please every interest group to get reelected, not to get campaign funds 
but to please the groups to get votes, to please the groups that are 
basic to them, whatever group that may be, however small it is. The 
idea being if you do not displease anybody then you are going to get 
them to vote for you next time since they are the ones that are the 
squeaky wheels paying attention.
  Consequently, that is why we have so much trouble balancing the 
budget and getting some common sense in government around here.
  Mr. Speaker, it seems to me only logical then that the way we can 
reform and the only way we can truly reform permanently Congress is to 
change the Constitution to make things balanced again, much like the 
Founding Fathers had originally thought it should be.
  The best way, the only way to do that is to set term limits. I 
propose a 12-year limit on the House and Senate. My version of the term 
limit amendment that will be out here as the base bill for a vote 
tomorrow is one which says that we serve 12 in the House and 12 in the 
Senate as a permanent deal.
  There is no retroactivity. There is no preemption of the States. 
Whatever the Supreme Court decides in the pending cases and the 
Arkansas case before it will be the law of the land. If they decide 
against the States, then the 12-year limit will be uniform. If they 
decide for the States, there will be somewhat of a hodgepodge 
potentially out there.
  Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is I think that a difference between the 
House and Senate terms, say 6 for the House and 12 for the Senate, 
would make the House an inferior body to the Senate. It would make it 
weaker. That does not make sense to me.
  I would urge my colleagues to vote for term limits and vote for the 
12-year version.

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