Dakota Beacon

Usually Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has some good ideas.  I think for the most part his heart is at least in the right place.  However, in the past week he came up with a real loser of an idea - not at all original, very threadbare, in fact.  One of the oldest of chestnuts.

He has raised the question of term limits again.  Now, before we get into the meat of this question, we should remember that as long as Democrats are in the majority in both houses this kind of thing is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon.  First of all, it would require a constitutional amendment - in other words, more than just a bill.  

That said, we should consider the fundamental effects this could have on our system of government.  As with many other well-meaning amendments and bills, there are unintended and undesirable consequences - the ripple effect from such an act reaches far and wide in our government and society.  If you doubt this, you can look at any of several of our amendments of the modern era.  The 17th Amendment is an example of this.  This idea rose out of a populist movement that swept across our country in the opening years of the 20th Century, in 1912.  Its supposed purpose was to make our Senate more “responsive” directly to the people, the voters.  Our original Constitution provided that members of our U.S. Senate were to be two from each state, regardless of population and chosen by the state legislature of each state.  There was no requirement that people vote on their Senators.  Well, it sounded like a good idea - make these people answerable directly, rather than indirectly, to the voters.  As it was, the people still had a voice but it was filtered through the elected members of their state legislatures.  The intention was two-fold in its aspect.  Firstly, it had been designed to bring unity among states with unequal populations - some of our states were “frontier” states or just smaller in size with lower populations and others were densely populated with our major cities and more central.  Those with smaller populations felt they would be “swallowed up” by larger ones.  Vermont didn’t stand a chance of being heard if their citizens differed in opinion from Pennsylvania, Virginia or New York, with port cities, large populations, etc.  The populous states did not want an unequal voice “per capita”.  If there were more people in New York, New Yorkers felt they should have the right to drown out Vermont or Connecticut.  

The solution was truly ingenious - the smaller population states were assured equal voice with every other state in the Senate, with two from each state, and the larger states enjoyed a larger number, proportional to their number of citizens, in the House of Representatives, or Congress.  By having the Senators chosen by elected state legislatures the people were assured that they still ultimately had a voice, but having legislatures make these decisions gave the states representation at the federal level, as separate states.  This kept the state interests in the foreground. Once this changed, and people’s connection with the Senate was direct, the idea of state governments and state interests and responsibilities have almost disappeared in our government structure at the federal level.  Instead of 50 states we have 50 little baronies or sort of glorified counties.  Most of our domestic policies which were once almost entirely the province of the state governments have devolved to federal control.  One of its overall effects is to cause the cost of federal government to soar.  It has played a large part in creating and ever expanding our national debt and removing the people ever farther from both control and accountability in governent spending.

This has resulted in effects we might not have wished for - far more extensive government spending and control.  Huge growth in the federal government.   Much less independent problem-solving and more dependence upon federal governments and federal money.  Many constitutionalists regret this one amendment for its far-reaching and mostly negative effects.  More inappropriate one-size-fits-all policy making.  Some other well-intended amendments with adverse consequences would include Prohibition.

If we consider Ted Cruz’s proposal we will see other ripple effects we may wish we had avoided.  His idea is to limit Members of Congress to three two-year terms and Senators to two six-year terms.  What would this do?  First and most obviously, it would strip us of our right to re-elect people we wanted to keep in office.  Does this really give us more freedom or less freedom?  It suggests that we are too stupid or too lazy to go out and campaign for a candidate to replace someone we don’t want in office.  Are we too stupid and lazy?  Perhaps.  But if we are, is taking our responsibilities away from us helping?  If we don’t like Senator X, we should get off the couch and find a candidate to challenge him in a primary, first of all, or vote for a different party if he stays on the ticket.  That entails some work.  If we are too lazy or too busy or too stupid to take up this challenge, maybe we don’t deserve anything else and should stop complaining.

But that is only the surface difference.  One of my favorite British comedies was the classic, Yes, Minister, and its sequel series, Yes, Prime Minister.  In these delightful and insightful tales, a pair of bureaucrats who “served” a British cabinet minister, Jim Hacker, really controlled the government, together with their cronies in other government bureaus.  Whatever Hacker wanted to do, promised to do or thought he should do, what these bureaucrat “civil servants” wanted is what happened in every case.  The elected members came and went but the people in charge of policy always remained the same - they were unelected career bureaucrats.  

The more power we take from elected officials, the more power is placed in the hands of the unelected bureaucrats.  I would ask you to pause for a moment here to reflect on where your own problems with government crop up and who you believe is imposing on you.  Is it the guy who comes around knocking on doors every two years asking for your vote, sending you periodic “letters” about what they have been doing for your district or state, the people whose office you call when you have a problem with your government?  The people you telephone or email when you want them to hear your opinion on a bill?  Or the IRS agent, the official at the unemployment office, the person who runs the VA, or the EPA or OSHA?  My guess is you will have a lot less luck with them than with your congressman.  The less influence or power your congressman has in Washington the more the unelected bureaucrats will have.

A lot of people are angry because they believe that their members of Congress are influenced by the money and the power of various lobbies - “green” lobbies, big pharma lobbies, the media, the insurance lobby, gun lobbies, labor unions, banks, whatever.  I would put it this way - if you object to the line of lobbyists who you imagine are standing outside the door of your congressman’s or senator’s office in Washington, would you really rather see your congressmen and senators lined up in the waiting rooms of the lobbyists?  Because if they are promised that they cannot have a career as your elected representative, you can be sure that they will need to be looking the whole time they are in office for their next career move.  We all know this happens anyway.  Some elected representative who served on the Armed Forces committee finds himself offered a juicy position with some aircraft manufacturer who has been selling materiel to the government.  It doesn’t seem quite right to us and it isn’t.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to just make it illegal for someone who served as an elected representative at the federal level to take a job with any company that sells to the United States government for, say, a period of 15 -20 years after they leave office?  

Finally, think about the effectiveness of a lame duck.  A lame duck, someone serving in his last term, has little incentive to serve the people unless his path is to another, usually senior, elected position - a congressman runs for senator, for example, or perhaps for governor, and then for senate or other high office - president, vice president, perhaps campaign a president for a cabinet post.  The incentive that makes them pick up the phone when you call, answer your letters or care one whit what your opinion is on a bill or policy, that disappears in that final term.   That’s when other interests become dominant over his interest in you and your opinion. 

It is easy to reach for the obvious and first “solution” to a perceived problem.  It takes wiser heads and slower reflexes to craft real solutions.  This was the genius of our Founding Fathers - they were circumspect.  They considered ramifications of policies or laws or regulations they thought about imposing.  They thought about long-term effects, they considered that people are not always virtuous, that they seek to support their own interests, sometimes at the expense of the public, and they sought to find creative ways to use these very weaknesses to make the nation and its government strong.  

We could look at many of the ill-conceived changes to our Constitution which well-intended politicians have suggested and in some cases implemented and we can see where it is a bit like taking that “unneeded” beam out from the ceiling, or that supporting wall in the basement.  Suddenly you have weakened or even destroyed the integrity of the structure.  So it is with overly simple “solutions” such as term limits.  We need to turn to education, and a culture of civil political participation - true, it’s the “hard way”, the “slow way”, but it would require the people themselves to take responsibility and it would hold our elected officials responsible.  We have been far too passive for far too long as a people.  

It has been said that “democracy” is the most difficult form of government.  It’s not for everyone.  It takes way more work to live in a free nation than it does to live day-to-day in a dictatorship or a monarchy of some sort.  We need to take up the responsibility to look ahead, to consider the many unintended effects of public policies and laws.  Just as with removing a keystone from an arched structure can cause the entire thing to come down, so can a policy or law, changed without considering how it is in balance with the whole.  We should stop the movement for these federal office “term limits'' right now and look for better ways to make our government responsive.  

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