[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
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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.
____________________