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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
978 points (100.0% liked)
politics
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100%. We need age and term limits for all elected offices.
We don't want a Senate with 60 Ted Cruz's. I agree with the other guy. Money reform first. Then we can consider age and term limits.
Abolishing the senate is the right reform for the senate.
This is the Way.
You say that out loud tho and people think you're Hitler. There is nothing undemocratic about advocating the abolition of an undemocratic institution.
Considering who is in control of the house, I can't help but think this is a bad idea.
If there is the will to abolish the Senate, then there will be a will to change how the House is elected and how many members it has.
Unless Republicans get overwhelming power in the house due to gerrymandering and then do it.
Clearly would remove districts from the system. Proportional elections are the only viable way to produce a legislature.
You're presenting problems to abolishing the Senate that simply won't exist because it's a MUCH bigger undertaking than you're presenting.
Republicans won't be doing anything in that scenario because the fascists would literally revolt (while bankrolled by the rich) before they allow the Senate to be abolished.
I guess the question is: what problem are you trying to solve by instituting age limits and term limits?
If the issue is the advantage of incumbency and having entrenched politicians with large campaign funding operations behind them, then maybe a better way of solving this would be campaign finance reform that prevents private dollar donations from non-individuals and heavy restrictions on how much an individual can contribute.
All that term limits and age limits in Congress would achieve is setting an artificial barrier for those who do the job well while setting up a new group of people to benefit from the legislature's dysfunction.
Power corrupts. The end. The longer you are in positions of power, the more exposure you have to influence from money. It needs to be a revolving door for every elected official. Get in. Do good things. Lead by example. Move on up or gtfo.
I feel like that misses a lot about how politics work. Someone just getting into office is often far too ineffective for us to allow our system to be run by first and second term legislators. First term legislators are often fairly useless because they are still learning the job. I'm not saying there is no solution to that, but it would have to be coupled with massive reform around the support mechanisms for our legislatures. You think the federal government is slow moving now, just wait until everyone in office has no idea how to do their job.
Edit: Also as others have pointed out, you'd also be terming very competent legislators along with the corrupt ones. I think people overestimate the amount of corruption in the legislative branch, due to the media creating a confirmation bias. For every evil corrupt piece of shit, there are 5-10 people you've never heard of just doing what they think is right (even if you don't agree with them).
Edit2: maybe a better solution is a dementia/Alzheimer's in person test given to all legislators past 65 every year, evaluated by a 3 doctor panel. If you fail the test, you're legally prevented from running and forced to resign if in office. If removed the political party impacted gets to appoint the replacement, otherwise if there is no political party (true independent) the executive branch of that state gets to appoint replacement.
Just look at Bernie.
Places that have instituted term limits have found them to backfire. They have less effective legislators who are more corrupt.
It makes sense when you think about who would be able to run constantly -- rich, retired people.