[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 52 (Monday, April 22, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3769-S3772]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO LIMIT CONGRESSIONAL TERMS

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of Senate Joint Resolution 21, which the clerk 
will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A joint resolution (S.J. Res. 21) proposing a 
     constitutional amendment to limit congressional terms.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the joint resolution.

       Pending:
       Thompson (for Ashcroft) amendment No. 3692, in the nature 
     of a substitute.
       Thompson (for Brown) amendment No. 3693 (to amendment No. 
     3692), to permit each State to prescribe the maximum number 
     of terms to which a person may be elected to the House of 
     Representatives and the Senate.
       Thompson (for Ashcroft) amendment No. 3694, of a perfecting 
     nature.
       Thompson (for Brown) amendment No. 3695 (to amendment No. 
     3694), to permit each State to prescribe the maximum number 
     of terms to which a person may be elected to the House of 
     Representatives and the Senate.
       Thompson amendment No. 3696, to change the length of limits 
     on Congressional terms to 12 years in the House of 
     Representatives and 12 years in the Senate.
       Thompson (for Brown) amendment No. 3697 (to amendment No. 
     3696), to permit each State to prescribe the maximum number 
     of terms to which a person may be elected to the House of 
     Representatives and the Senate.
       Thompson motion to recommit the resolution to the Committee 
     on the Judiciary with instructions.
       Thompson (for Ashcroft) amendment No. 3698 (to the motion 
     to recommit), to change instructions to report back with 
     limits on Congressional terms of 6 years in the House of 
     Representatives and 12 years in the Senate.
       Thompson (for Brown) modified amendment No. 3699 (to 
     amendment No. 3698), to change instructions to report back 
     with language allowing each State to set the terms of members 
     of the House of Representatives and the Senate from that 
     State.

  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, this is a constitutional amendment to 
limit the terms of Members of Congress. It calls for a limitation of 12 
years, 2 terms in the U.S. Senate; a limitation of 12 years, 6 terms in 
the House of Representatives.
  As I indicated, the last vote on term limitations in this body was in 
1947, so it has taken about 49 years to get the second vote on this, 
not that anybody has been particularly pushing for it.
  I believe it is the first constitutional amendment for term limits to 
ever come out of committee. This had a full committee hearing. It 
passed out of the Judiciary Committee, and now, for the first time, a 
committee bill is on the floor ready for consideration. I think it is 
long overdue.
  In this body, it has been my observation that we pay as close 
attention as we can to what the American people want. We pay as close 
attention as we can to what our constituents want. We have offices all 
across the various States. We go to those offices, we listen, we get 
tallies on what people are calling in about, what people's concerns 
are. We go out and we pride ourselves, as elected Members, having town 
hall meetings, and we say a large part of the purpose of that is to 
listen, to see what is going on so we can be reflective of the opinions 
of the people that we represent.
  We run our campaigns on the same basis. We say, let us be your 
Representative and we will go up and listen to the people. Let us turn 
the Congress back to the people. We try to respond every time we get 
the feeling that 51 percent of our constituents want something. There 
is nothing more responsive than someone who has been elected to office, 
who feels his constituents are pressing for something, even by the 
barest of margins--except in one area. That is the area we are dealing 
with here today, term limits.
  We see poll after poll after poll, and we poll early and often. 
Sometimes it is like all that is happening around here is a rendition 
of those polls. My colleague from Massachusetts was talking about how 
many women favored minimum wage, how many Republicans, how many 
Democrats, all based on polling results. Who is ahead in the 
Presidential race? All these various issues. Who is for us and who is 
against us? By what margin? The distinction between last week, when 52 
percent of the people were for this proposition, and the week before 
last when only 49 percent of the people were for this proposition, so 
we see a little movement there.
  There is extreme, extreme attention to the temperature of the 
American people and to our constituents, except about one thing, and 
that is term limits. Poll after poll indicates that upward of 75 
percent of the American people favor term limits, and the overwhelming 
majority of States and localities that have had the opportunity to vote 
on term limits have come out in favor of term limits. Mr. President, 22 
States have imposed term limits on themselves, even while other States 
were not doing so, saying: We think it is an idea whose time has come. 
It would be for the benefit of America for us to set the example, and 
we are willing to impose it on ourselves even though there is no 
obligation for other States to do so.
  Yet, even in light of this overwhelming majority of the American 
people who feel something is basically going wrong with their country 
and they are searching for something fundamental to do about it, we pay 
absolutely no attention to what is going on. We pay no attention to the 
overwhelming sentiment of the American people with regard to this one 
area.
  The case can be made that we ought to be more reflective in some 
cases, that we ought to be a little more isolated. This is supposed to 
be a deliberative body and sometimes we do not take enough time to 
really reflect on the important issues that are facing us. Sometimes we 
get too caught up in the number of bills that we can pass and the 
gamesmanship of what is going on in this town. But, why is this the 
only one area where this rule seems to apply to this body, and no other 
area? The answer, of course, is because in a Congress that busies 
itself in regulating other people's lives and purifying other 
institutions, other businesses, other individuals, that changes when it 
comes to doing something about ourselves, even something as innocuous 
as a 12-year term. This constitutional amendment would not even need to 
be ratified for 7 years. Then it would be prospective. It is the most 
minimal first step toward trying to put us in a position to face the 
21st century that we could possibly think of. It probably would not 
affect anybody in this body right now, another 12 years on top of what 
they have already served, and on top of the 7 years it might take for 
ratification of the constitutional amendment. That is not exactly a 
drastic move, not exactly a revolutionary change. Yet we have all this 
difficulty even getting to first base.
  Let us talk about what this is not all about, because the detractors 
of term limits, in their scrambling around to try to come up with 
reasons why in this particular case the overwhelming majority of the 
American people are wrong, have set the terms of the debate for us, in 
many cases.
  What it is not about is vindictiveness. A lot of people are angry 
with the Congress of the United States, but this is not about 
vindictiveness. Life is too short for that.
  On the contrary, Mr. President, I really believe that imposing term 
limits on ourselves would do more to restore the dignity and the esteem 
of Congress with the American people than anything else. I pointed out 
the other day that columnist George Will wrote a book awhile back 
called ``Restoration,'' and it was about term limits. Most people would 
have a hard time seeing that connection until they got into it and read 
it.
  The point is, and a very valid point, I think, indeed, is that at the 
time our

[[Page S3770]]

country was founded, people would line the streets and say, ``Long live 
Congress, long live Congress.'' Can you imagine what most of them would 
be saying today if they had a shot at making a comment at us parading 
down the street together?
  What has changed in that period of time? We have lost the respect of 
the American people. I believe this self-imposition is something that 
the people feel in their hearts is right and something that would, in 
one way, be to our own detriment--it might cut a few careers a few 
years short--but would do more to restore the faith of the United 
States people in the U.S. Congress than anything else. And that, Mr. 
President, is probably more important than anything else, because 
Congress is the message deliverer, and we have some tough messages to 
deliver to this country. A lot of it is not going to be well received. 
A lot of it is not being well received, but it is the truth, and it has 
to do with the future of our country and the things we need to do to 
make sure we fulfill that tacit understanding that each generation is 
supposed to have with the next, and that is, that we will leave this 
place a little better off than we found it. We are not fulfilling that 
commitment now.
  Another thing it is not about is simply changing new faces for old 
faces. There is nothing that inherently goes wrong with someone because 
they have been around a place for a while. There is nothing beneficial 
about changing a new face for an old face if a new face comes in with 
the same attitude as the old one had. That is not what it is all about.
  In fact, I am willing to concede that you could make a pretty good 
case for the proposition that for the majority of our history in this 
country, our system served us pretty well. We went through two world 
wars in this country, we went through a Civil War, we went through a 
Great Depression, and we had to dip into the till pretty deep 
sometimes, but we always came back and balanced our budget. We had a 
balanced budget as late as 1969 in this country.
  Our Founding Fathers did not address term limits. It never occurred 
to them that we would wind up with the professionalism and the 
careerism that we see today.
  So, for a long, long time, we could get by with what we had, because 
we did not have the culture of spending, we did not have the growth of 
Government and all the demands and pressures that are on us day in and 
day out to spend more and more and more. We did not have members so 
faced with the proposition, are we going to get along with people and 
get reelected by saying yes to any and every spending measure that 
comes down the pike, or are we going to risk our political future and 
say, ``We can't do things the same old way anymore; we can't 
necessarily grow each program at 10 percent a year anymore.''
  Everybody in this town knows that--both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue 
and both sides of the aisle. We know that, and yet we are afraid, 
basically, to say that. Or somebody says it and somebody else will get 
up and say they are trying to harm old people and trying to harm young 
people to get political advantage out of it for the next election. We 
get into that cycle: scare people momentarily. Sometimes it works, and 
yet the American people have this sense, this innate sense that 
something is really going wrong, something is not working right.
  So it is not about vindictiveness or even throwing the rascals out. 
My goodness, we in this body, anything that we are able to accomplish, 
we stand on the shoulders of giants. Many giants have been in this 
body. I hold this body in the highest esteem. I have reverence for this 
body. I have never understood why somebody would want to be part of an 
institution for which they did not have any respect.

  I used to come here as a very young man and sit up in the gallery and 
watch the great debates that would take place, even at that stage, and 
that has not been that long ago. People were talking about the issues. 
People seemed to have a little bit more time to deliberate. We were 
still right at the point where we were capable of balancing the budget. 
That time has changed.
  So what is it about? What it is about is not all the little things 
that you hear debated back and forth on the 6 o'clock news. If you 
cannot get it out in 15 or 20 seconds, it is going to be totally lost. 
It is not about new faces, it is not about experience, it is not about 
whether the lobbyists or the staffs are for it or against it. It is 
about dealing with the monumental problems that are facing this 
country, problems that are so great and so ingrained that many 
thoughtful people on both sides of the aisle think that it is already 
too far gone for us to do anything about. And it is about the fact that 
we are proving ourselves incapable under current circumstances of 
dealing with it.
  We are mortgaging our future, and it has to do with nothing more 
basic than our need to perpetuate ourselves and to avoid risk, which 
too often means avoiding the truth, and, therefore, we continue to go 
down the road that we know is bound to lead to disaster unless we make 
significant changes.
  What does this desire for reelection and staying do to us? It causes 
us to spend. It all comes down to the growth of Government and the 
culture of spending. This is not a partisan issue. You can pick your 
administration or you can pick who is in control of Congress--the House 
or the Senate--and go back for the last few decades, and I am willing 
to say that there is enough fault on either side; that neither side can 
take partisan advantage of this if you view it objectively.
  Every time someone stood up to speak the simple truth about the 
future and took their eyes for a few minutes off the next election and 
tried to do something that would make this country stronger for the 
future, the other side would invariably get up and take partisan 
advantage of it, scare people, go on television with 30-second ads, and 
whoever brought it up would cower back to their corner, not to be 
brought up again for a while.
  Mr. President, there is no simple solution to what I am talking 
about. It is fundamental. We have gotten ourselves into a deep ditch. 
We did not get there overnight, and we will not get ourselves out of it 
overnight, but we have to start examining possibilities that will put 
us in a position of doing something about it.
  How can we continue down this road? This proposal will not affect me 
personally either way and it will affect hardly any of the Members in 
this Congress, I would think. But if we had a system that concentrated 
on how best could we operate in the next century in order to solve 
these problems, I think that term limits would be a major, major step 
toward doing that.
  I believe if we open the system up so that people knew that these 
jobs would be open from time to time, in the first place you would draw 
more people into the system. Right now, unless you have access to 
millions of dollars--and usually through incumbency, which allows you 
to raise millions of dollars--it is not a participation that you can 
enjoy as an average citizen. We have 250 million citizens in this 
country, and one small fraction of 1 percent are all that have any 
realistic shot of ever setting foot on this floor.
  So bring more people in. What kind of motivation would those people 
have? If people were coming into the system knowing from day one that 
this could not be their career, that, hopefully, they have already had 
a career and, hopefully, they will have another one and this will be an 
interruption to a career and not a career in and of itself, would they 
be as frightened of the special interests?
  Would they be as frightened of the poll numbers? Would they be as 
frightened of the proposition that 51 percent of the people might get 
temporarily mad at them if they spoke the truth and said, ``You can 
have a 7 percent increase this year but you can't have 10 percent''?
  I think we would have people who would come in with a different 
agenda. I think we would have people who would come in with the idea, 
more likely--not universal, because nothing is--more likely that, I'm 
going to give a few years to my country. Just because it is 12 years 
does not mean you have to stay 12 years either. That is a maximum. Give 
a few years to my country the way they used to, the way they used to 
some years ago, and try to do the right thing. It is called public 
service. That is what it used to be. Citizens used to come in and do 
that. That is what the Founding Fathers had

[[Page S3771]]

in mind, and that would go on. I think it is only a Congress which is 
peopled by individuals who have that attitude that is ever, ever going 
to get us out of the monumental straits we are in.
  By the year 2000, the net interest paid on the national debt will 
surpass defense spending and is projected to become the second largest 
Federal expenditure after Social Security. This is from the Bipartisan 
Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform --the bipartisan commission. 
By 2012, unless appropriate policy changes are made, projected spending 
on entitlement programs and interest on the debt will grow so rapidly 
they will consume all tax revenues collected by the Federal 
Government--all tax revenues. In 2030, to bring the deficit down to the 
current level, the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform 
concluded that either all Federal taxes would have to be increased by 
85 percent or all Federal spending programs would have to be cut in 
half. This bipartisan commission is telling you what is going to 
happen. Have you heard it anywhere else?
  By 2012, mandatory spending, interest, and entitlements will exceed 
all Federal revenues, leaving no money for the Federal Government to 
spend at its discretion on programs like education, law enforcement, 
research and development, national defense, and health research. By 
2030, entitlement spending alone is projected to exceed all Federal 
revenues.
  We have had a philosophy now for several years in this town that a 
Senator is judged in large part by the amount of pork he can bring back 
to his State, not realizing that ultimately what is good for Tennessee 
is good for America and what is bad for America cannot be good for 
Tennessee or any other State.
  We have a proliferation of interest groups as we pass more and more 
laws and regulate more and more things. Those who are the objects of 
those laws and those who are being regulated naturally come to town to 
tell us what we are doing to them. When these programs are ingrained 
and people are used to receiving these moneys, there is no turning 
back. It is always more and more and more.
  You attend hearings for a month, and you will never hear anybody 
coming back in saying they want to give some money back to the Federal 
Government. It all goes the other way. We are now facing what one 
philosopher said a long time ago; that is, the ultimate test for any 
democracy is whether or not, when they discover they can pay themselves 
out of their own treasury, there can ever be any turning back.
  The other thing we need to address, along with the absolutely 
horrendous fiscal problem that lies for our children to keep up with, 
is the public cynicism. Out of all of this trying to be responsive, out 
of all of this poll taking, out of all this technology that we have to 
monitor the pulse so we can claim we are doing just exactly what the 
people want us to do, what do the people think about their Government?
  A very thoughtful gentleman by the name of Haynes Johnson wrote a 
book a year or so ago called ``Divided We Fall.'' He stated the 
following:

       For at least a decade, and in reality far longer, people at 
     the bottom have grown increasingly alienated from those at 
     the top, and especially from leaders who seem unable and 
     often unwilling to address their concerns. Over the last 
     generation, surveys on public alienation have tracked 
     America's steadily eroding confidence in its leaders and 
     in its institutions--a decline so uniform and so steep 
     that it raises the most serious questions about public 
     faith in the democratic system and therefore the ability 
     of that system to function.
  Mr. President, that is serious stuff. Mr. Johnson went around the 
country talking to people, and spent a long time in researching this 
book. He pointed out a recent Harris poll indicating that, ``At the 
bottom in public esteem were law firms, with only 11 percent of 
Americans expressing great confidence in them. Barely above them was 
Congress at 12 percent.'' Thank God for law firms.
  He further states:

       Traditionally, American politicians are driven by the 
     short-term approach. From city council members to members of 
     Congress, emphasis is on the ``quick fix'' to complex 
     problems and on claiming political credit for responding to 
     immediate needs. The result, as we have seen, is postponement 
     of decisions on major long-term issues. Thus, the real size 
     of the budget deficit is masked. Genuine attempts to reduce 
     it are put off to the next session of Congress--and the next 
     and the next. Action is not taken today; it is always planned 
     for tomorrow, to take place in what Washington policymakers, 
     in typical semantic obfuscation, call ``the out years.'' The 
     out years never quite arrive; they continue to lie beyond 
     grasp. So the debts increase and the charade continues with 
     each new congressional session.

  I ask my colleagues whether or not that sounds familiar.
  Finally, he states that:

       These are among the many reasons the political system 
     remains under siege. A more elemental one involves the public 
     conviction that the American political system has produced a 
     generation of politicians in both parties who can't, or 
     won't, tell the truth, because if they do, they will not win; 
     and that lie permeates American politics.

  It is a sad situation, Mr. President, sad situation. For those of us 
who simply say, the status quo, we cannot make any fundamental changes, 
things are going great, I think the evidence is overwhelmingly to the 
contrary.
  So, Mr. President, I say let us give the States an opportunity. That 
is all we are doing with this constitutional amendment. Let us give the 
States an opportunity to address this issue and see whether or not the 
people really believe what the polls indicate that they do. I feel like 
that is the least we can do and is our foremost responsibility to see 
if we cannot better derive a system in the future that would allow us 
to cope with this unbelievable cynicism of the American people toward 
us and our clear inability to get a handle on problems that are going 
to be the ruination of the next generation. I yield the floor.
  [Disturbance in the visitors' galleries.]
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Just to mention to those in the gallery, it is 
against Senate rules to have any show of approval or disapproval of any 
statements made on actions taken on the Senate floor.
  Mr. ABRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Let me begin by offering my appreciation and compliments to the 
Senators from Tennessee and Missouri for having worked as hard as they 
have on the issue of term limits and bringing the issue of term limits 
to the attention of the U.S. Senate.
  I think our freshman class is strongly supportive as a group of the 
term limits effort. I think that Senators who have led this battle 
deserve special acknowledgement for the support they have given. I rise 
today and thank them and also make some comments of my own which are 
pertinent to this debate.
  Mr. President, in my State of Michigan, the people have already 
spoken on an important issue the Senate will consider here this week; 
that is, term limits. In 1992, Michigan voters passed term limits for 
Federal officials by an overwhelming margin--6 years for the U.S. House 
of Representatives and 12 years for the U.S. Senate.
  I repeat, it was an overwhelming margin, Mr. President. This was not 
a close vote. In 1993, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, and in 1994 
I ran on a platform committed to trying to make certain that the will 
of the people of my State was acknowledged and was followed by the 
Congress of the United States.
  The fight for term limits in Washington, however, must continue. I 
pledge to fight in Washington and make sure that the limits the people 
of Michigan voted for would be permissible. Term limits are widely 
observed at other levels of Government, Mr. President.
  The President of the United States, 41 Governors, 20 State 
legislators, and hundreds of State and local officials currently abide 
by term limits. Why not Congress?
  There has been an overwhelming expression of support for term limits 
in State after State. Since 1990, more than 25 million votes have been 
cast by voters in 22 States supporting congressional term limits. Polls 
have consistently shown that more than three-quarters of the American 
people favor term limits. I believe, Mr. President, that it is our 
obligation to fight to make sure that the people's voice does not go 
unheard.
  The 104th Congress is the first Congress to have recorded votes in 
either Chamber on term limits. The Senate

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vote this week will join the 1995 House vote to produce first-ever 
votes in both Houses. The vote in the House was held in March 1995 and 
received a majority of 227 votes. Passage, however, of a constitutional 
amendment would have required a two-thirds majority, or 290 votes.
  For the first time in history, the Senate will vote on term limits. 
While the measure is not currently expected to receive the necessary 67 
votes required for passage, this vote is an important beginning to what 
I believe is an inevitable outcome. While approval by two-thirds of the 
House and Senate will not be easy, the support of 75 percent of the 
American people will make a difference as we continue this important 
effort.
  When I campaigned for the Senate in 1994 in my State, I heard from 
one end of Michigan to the other a consistent and very, very 
responsive, positive public outpouring of support for term limits. 
People felt that the Congress, in particular, and Washington as an 
institution was out of touch. They felt that a lot of factors were at 
play, but, most importantly, they felt that too many people ran for 
Congress or for the U.S. Senate, went to Washington, and ultimately 
stayed so long that they lost sight of the reasons that they ran for in 
the first place.
  Promises in campaigns were seldom, if ever, kept. Indeed, by the end 
of a term the promises of the previous campaign had often been totally 
forgotten. People felt that this lack of contact and communication, 
this out-of-touch, Washington, inside-the-beltway mentality was the 
reason that Washington had not been able to deal with important 
problems confronting America and, in particular, the problems of the 
Federal budget deficit and runaway Federal spending.
  People in my State believe that they have sent too many of their 
hard-earned earnings to Washington. They would like to keep more of 
what they earn. They feel the Federal tax burden is too high. They 
cannot understand why they have to balance their family budget, but we 
in Washington have not been able for 25 years to balance the Federal 
budget.
  The reason, they feel, more than any other that has led to this 
problem, this lack of responsiveness, is that too many Federal 
officials have been away from home too long, too many Federal officials 
have lost touch with voters back home and do not understand the things 
that motivate the average working families in Michigan.
  Mr. President, I do not think Michigan is atypical. I suspect that 
virtually every Member of this body hears the same thing in their 
State. I suspect Members of the House of Representatives, likewise, 
hear the same sentiments expressed to them when they are in their 
constituency.
  Now, this Congress has begun to move, I believe, in the right 
direction to address some of these concerns. Last year, for the first 
time we voted in the very first action taken by the Congress, to apply 
the laws that apply to the rest of the country to Members of Congress 
themselves. We put an end, in the Congressional Accountability Act, to 
the double standard that said that things we adopted here as Federal 
law were fine for the rest of America but not fine for ourselves. That 
has begun to change the way we do things here in the U.S. Senate.
  I have been intrigued by the fact that so many of my colleagues and I 
have found that meeting the various labor and other laws, requirements 
that we now are required to follow, have changed the way we operate our 
office and made us more mindful and concerned about labor relations and 
other issues that come on a day-to-day basis before us in our Senate 
offices. In the same way that has put us more in touch, I think nothing 
will put Congress more in touch with people back home than a frequent 
and regular turnover in the composition of the House and Senate of the 
United States.

  Mr. President, I believe that the term limits movement is a movement 
that will only grow. If 75 percent favor term limits today, I believe 
it will be even a higher percentage in the years to come. That is why 
whether or not we are able to succeed this year in passing term limits, 
it is only a matter of time, I believe, before we will have term limits 
as part of our Constitution.
  To that, I want to commend the majority leader, Senator Dole, for 
scheduling the vote on term limits here in the Senate. For all the talk 
about bringing reform to Congress, I believe our best approach to make 
Congress better is through term limits. I urge all of my colleagues to 
support this much-needed reform of our political system. I urge them to 
support it because it is the right direction to take. I urge them to 
support it because it has such strong popular support. I also urge them 
to support it because I think it is only right that the citizens of the 
various States have the chance to set the limits on terms of Federal 
officials.
  To conclude, that the citizens of Michigan do not have the 
constitutional authority to determine how long their Members of 
Congress and their U.S. Senators may serve, is, in my judgment, a 
strong repudiation of the rights of people in a free democracy to make 
decisions for themselves.
  Mr. President, I close on this note, by urging my colleagues to 
support the term limit efforts we are undertaking this week.
  Before I yield the floor, I will ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for 2 minutes to make a brief statement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________