Just days after ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the top leadership position, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) signaled he’d be willing to raise the threshold for a future motion to vacate — but only if Republicans agree to vote on a number of political reforms.
Can you explain why? I have a vague idea of why you would say that but can you help me clarify why term limits would empower lobiests?
What we have seen in state legislatures with short term limits is that new officials come in and they need some help figuring things out. Whereas before you’d have qp year veteran lawmakers to partner with or etc., now the only people that have been around long enough to actually know how to get things done are the under staff and the lobbyists.
As an example, the Senate has a bunch of arcane rules that you have to know how to manipulate to be able to exert leverage. Now, we have Schumer and Turtle, who knows how to use those levers. However, if we had term limits, I doubt they would be able to operate those levers as effectively. But the lobbyist who has been there and watched things for 20 years will still know.
Also, there’s a reason this is coming from Gaetz, and it’s because someone is bankrolling him to support this. We all know he has no principles.
Tldr: I’d rather keep the power in hands of an elected official than in the hands of unelected corporate lobbyists. We all know corporations practically run the country right now, why give more power?
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If they know they’re going to be a Congress member for life… they’re also going to maximize the amount of money they can get paid lol
This is a very good counterpoint imo. I know it’s a bit of a slippery slope argument, but thinking about this as an “in for a penny, in for a pound” kind of scenario really does empirically align with human nature. If you’re willing to sell out for something comparably small at the start, you’ll think less of it next time your donors ask for more, and it goes on and on with no end in sight.
There’s a big gap between “congress for life” and “term limits”, and that gap mostly consists of “winning re-election”.
Winning reelection in America is more about who you know than appealing to voters. The Party protects its incumbents.
What are you gonna do? Vote for the other Party? 😂
Also, since they need to be re-elected they spend most of their time dialing for dollars and less time actually legislating.