Term Limits And The Bailout

01 Oct, 2008 by John Hawkins

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If you need yet another reason to support term limits, I would refer you to the bailout crisis that we’re having and would say that provides as good a justification as you’re ever going to find.

Now let me explain why I say that.

First of all, the root of the bailout crisis is in Congress. By forcing banks to make loans to shaky people who were at a high risk of defaulting, they built a time bomb into the system. When Republicans like George Bush and John McCain pointed out that there was a problem, many of these same people said there was nothing to worry about. Now, we have a crisis and the very people who are responsible for creating and maintaining it are in charge of fixing the problem and are blaming everybody but themselves for creating it.

Guys like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd? They deserve to be publicly horsewhipped for their role in this scandal, but instead, they’re the darlings of the media, the go-to-guys who are supposed to get us out of this whole mess.

Therein lies the problem: Congress is filled not with decent, honest, public servants who are trying to be their best for the country, but with flim-flam men who love their cushy jobs and whose primary talent is slipperiness.

Look at Barney Frank; he had a bisexual prostitution ring running out of his apartment. Chris Dodd got a crooked sweetheart deal from Countrywide and is loaded down with contributions from Fannie Mae — and they’re lightweights. Joe Biden is a blithering, gaffe prone idiot and he’s the Dem’s VP choice. Alcee Hastings was impeached for corruption as a judge and William Jefferson got caught with bribe money in his freezer — yet they’re still in Congress. It’s not that unusual anymore for the worst sort of scoundrels and incompetents to be representing the country in Congress.

When you have a Congress that is primarily made up of men like this, men with no character, who are little more than con men operating on an epic scale, how do you trust your government?

Yes, having term limits would mean that good, decent servants of the country like Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint would only get to stay in Congress for a limited time, but if the system guarantees that men like that will always be a tiny minority on the Hill, then don’t we need to change it?

With this bailout crisis, how much better off would we be if the majority of our representatives in office weren’t worried about getting reelected, didn’t feel compelled to cover up for past mistakes made by Congress, and were immune to the pressure from business groups because they wouldn’t need their contributions? How much more faith would you have in the wisdom of their decisions under those circumstances?

Now, I will admit it wouldn’t be easy to push term limits through because it would take a constitutional amendment — but, if we were to make term limits non-retroactive, I think it would be possible to get it through Congress if the American people really wanted it. With the trust in Congress and the institution’s popularity hovering near an all-time low in popularity, I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for conservatives to start talking about term limits again.