Congressional Representatives Should Not Have Term Limits Essay

The debate on whether congressional representatives should or should not have term limits is still a big issue in the realm of the United States’ political system. This issue has been debated for many years, but is constantly overlooked by congressional representatives from across the country. Having congressional term limits would be extremely beneficial to the political system of the United States, and to the citizens of the United States. Some of the founding fathers were also in favor of creating term limits for representatives. The purpose of this paper is to prove that it would be beneficial for members of Congress to have term limits because it promotes new ideas, prevents corruption, and would have a positive impact on the legislation …show more content…
Advocates of term limits knew that this would be an almost impossible task since members of Congress would not want to pass a law that would shorten their own careers. Eventually, it was found that the individual states had the right to limit the terms of their own politicians. Since states had the right to choose whether politicians would be subject to term limits, it was decided that some states would put it on the ballot during the next election. Colorado was the first state to put the issue on the ballot in the 1990 election. The measure overwhelmingly passed, which made it an enormous victory for term limit advocates. After the first state had successfully passed legislation limiting the terms of congressional representatives, other states began to consider it. Soon after Colorado passed the legislation limiting the terms of congressional representatives, other states, such as California and Oklahoma, decided that the people would vote on the same issue for limiting the terms of state legislatures. Term limits became popular in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Opponents of term limits tried to appeal to the public through the media to rally support against term limits, but for most of the early 1990s, polls showed that about 70 percent of people were in favor of limiting terms of …show more content…
Currently, there are fifteen states across the United States that have laws limiting the terms of legislatures. The most common type of term limit is on state legislatures where both state representatives and state senators can serve a maximum of eight years. There are multiple states with this law throughout the country. The states that have this law are “Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and South Dakota.” Not only do some state legislatures have term limits on its members, but also the majority of states in the United States have term limits on the governor of that state. Currently, thirty-seven states throughout the country have term limits on the governor. The majority of those thirty-seven states only allow the governor to serve two four-year terms. The term limits in these states has helped keep fresh ideas and ideologies moving through the state’s political system, and has also kept keep the elections in these states