Q&A of the Day – How to Achieve Congressional Term Limits
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: Submitted via talkback asking about whether it’s possible for President Trump to take executive action that could lead to congressional term limits.
Bottom Line: Ahh yes. Congressional term limits. One of the most politically popular concepts that never goes anywhere. According to the Pew Research Center addressing congressional term limits has consistently been polled as the most popular political issue – with 87% of voters in favor of implementing term limits. And yet nothing. President Trump’s address to Congress tonight would represent the perfect platform to address this issue. And it is an issue he supports. In fact, President Trump had to this to say regarding congressional term limits which is #10 in his ten-point plan to “Dismantle the Deep state”. In his words... I will push a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of congress. President Trump has moved at a historic pace through his first six weeks as president, however the topic of terms limits hasn’t been one of those areas.
As President Trump mentioned, it’s a constitutional amendment that would need to happen to establish congressional term limits. That’s due to congressional terms existing under Article I Sections 2 and 3 of the Constitution. Section 2 addresses the House and says:
- The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
Section 3 says this:
- The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.
That’s it as far as congressional limits goes. For this reason, there’s nothing that President Trump can do, other than to offer his support and to use his political capital to attempt to achieve this. There are only two paths to a constitutional amendment. The first path is for two-thirds of the House and Senate to propose language to the states, with three-quarters of the states needed to ratify an amendment. This is how the constitution has been amended previously.
The other option is through a constitutional convention. That option would require at least 34 states to call for a convention and 38 states would need to ratify the proposed amendment. A constitutional amendment has never been achieved through a constitutional convention.
The most recent constitutional amendment to pass, the 27th amendment, was adopted in 1992. The bar for constitutional amendments is intentionally extremely high, though for an issue in which nearly 9 in 10 people support, if ever there were to be another amendment, you might think that this could be the one. But perhaps the most challenging aspect of achieving this, is through the only method the constitution has been amended by, the process would have to start by convincing two-thirds of congress that they need to pass an amendment to limit how long they can remain in office. For that reason, it probably would require a never before attempted constitutional convention to pass a congressional term limits amendment.
With so much already on President Trump’s plate requiring congress’s assistance to achieve... This is probably an issue that takes a back seat for at least the time being. President Trump has been laser focused on executing his 20-point plan outlined prior to his reelection called Agenda 47. Pushing for congressional term limits, which would be a monumental task to achieve, would potentially distract from other key agenda items. I could see this being more likely pushed by the president as a year 3 type of priority.