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Renewing Limited Government: Term Limits

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: In America, the "land of the free," the government has run amok. The Founders, who fought (and in some cases, died) to leave a country wherein citizens were to rule and the government was supposed to be limited, would be shocked at the size of the behemoth that is the modern federal government. And many states have just as bloated a bureaucracy....

Renewing Limited Government: Term Limits

One Of Ten Good Ideas To Bring Back Prosperity In America, the "land of the free," the government has run amok. The Founders, who fought (and in some cases, died) to leave a country wherein citizens were to rule and the government was supposed to be limited, would be shocked at the size of the behemoth that is the modern federal government. And many states have just as bloated a bureaucracy.

To those who would start a business or seek to invest and build wealth, this is important because the people diminish as the government grows. That means that the bigger government gets, the smaller the free market, the private economy, and the entrepreneurial headroom of the citizenry become. Some economists argue that tax-and-spend "stimulus" government promotes growth; but we know that this simply is not the case. Every dollar spent by the government has to be confiscated from the productive element of society (the free market), and is generally redistributed to incentivize the unproductive. Every government job destroys more than one "real" job in the productive private sector.

Somewhere along the line, during the last century of "progressivism," being an elected government official became attractive as a long-term (in many cases, life-long) career. Where dedicated patriots once ran for election from among their peers to do their "turn" in government service, politicians began to view elected office in terms of what it could bring them (the politicians) more than for what service in office could do for the country (or state). People who might've studied business or law began studying the newly-created disciplines of political science and public administration (myself included). You could argue that the majority of elected government officials have always been more self-serving than altruistic, and I'd agree... today's difference is that the limits placed on those scoundrels by the forward-thinking Founders (limits such as the Constitution) are now routinely ignored, or circumvented, by career politicians.

Some career electeds have been dedicated, selfless, patriotic servants of the citizenry... but the overwhelming majority of those who spend their entire careers in places like the U.S. Congress have grown fat and rich at the public trough, sold out to special interests, and abused the privilege of the opportunity for continuous re-election. Today, when a person who's served decades in the House or Senate can earn millions (often from mysterious sources) and can bring great government power to bear on behalf of nefarious supporters (notably Big Labor bosses and radical activists), it's easy to see that the time for real term limits has arrived.

The President is already limited to two terms, or eight years in office. Senators should be limited to two six-year terms, and Congressional Representatives to four or five two-year terms. State Governors and Legislators should be limited to no more than ten total years in office, and even some local officials (county commissioners, city council members, etc.) should be, as well.

Eight to twelve years is plenty of time to conduct the business of the people who elected you, and then to step down and let someone else take a turn.

What's the counter-argument? You lose "professionals" who "know what they're doing," and you put the country (or the state) at the mercy of inexperienced neophytes. My response: so? All those professionals have put us in a hell of a mess over the last few decades... and I won't dispute that they knew what they were doing, but merely point out that we didn't. They've abused the privilege. And as the Tea Party tsunami of last autumn proved, there are smart people out there who are willing to serve, electable, and who thankfully DON'T know where the pig troughs are. They may need to figure out how to run the country, but the Founders had in mind that we'd all be involved, all informed, and all able to take a turn running the country. We're supposed to catch on quickly... and this year's Congressional freshman class is proving that we can.

There are at least nine other things we can do to renew our commitment to limited government (and thereby to freedom and prosperity) in America. But the first step is to enact term limits. It's time to become again the nation wherein no one properly considers it their life-long privilege to rule the rest of us. Not in the land of the free.

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