Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The too-short term limit mistake

The too-short term limit mistake
LaRue writes at Structure Matters. He is a former deputy director of the Eisenhower Institute and of the American Society of International Law.

Advocates for congressional term limits have an easy target: representatives and senators so easily reelected that they can elevate their own and their donors' interests above those of their voters. Adding to this worry over real or perceived self-interest, with or without actual corruption, is concern about our long-serving elected leaders' reduced capacities to govern as they age.

But the advocates – whether good-government reformers, conservative originalists, thoughtful independents, or combinations of the three – keep missing the bull's eye. And they miss by a decade or more. They anchor their proposals with a two-term limit in the Senate, which they should consider doubling if they want positive governing change.

Such 12-year limits have dominated congressional term-limit proposals ever since they began emerging in the latter half of the last century. The problem targeted decades ago was congressional "rigidity" or "inertia;" today it is swampiness. Now as well as then, such short limits would fail to fix the problem and would cause serious additional harm.

First, limiting congressional tenure to a dozen years would shift governing and policy expertise outside the institution; further empowering lobbyists and special interests would serve neither representational nor national interests. Second, such short tenures, combined with periodic partisan rotation of institutional control, would weaken the legislative branch internally and diminish its ability to check the executive branch. (There are additional drawbacks as well.)

So where does the real tenure problem lie? With the long-serving veterans who choose not to leave. Their extended service constrains the institution's succession pathways and, more frequently than anyone likes to acknowledge, produces less skilled governance. Limits of four Senate terms would address both challenges.

We must first deflate the notion of citizen legislators, who serve the nation briefly before returning to their states to continue their careers. This was the norm before the Civil War, when 40% of Representatives would not run for reelection after any given Congress. The 20 th Century, particularly after WWII, saw the importance of the federal government grow and careers in Washington become attractive. Since 1900, the share of members not running for reelection averaged just 11.5%.

But such careerism is not the problem. The country's development and the nature of its challenges require that national effort and expertise be deployed. Rather, it is the unwillingness of senior members to relinquish power.

By the end of the 19 th Century, only nine people elected to Congress had ever served 30 years or more; at the start of the 21 st Century, fully 5% and then 6% of the institution – 28 members in 2007, rising to 34 in 2009 – was made up of 30+-year veterans. Today, seven percent of Senators have reached the three-decade threshold and the average age of all Senators is over 64, the highest ever.

What's wrong with such long tenures and the Senators' correspondingly advanced ages? First, less-than-capable leadership does become more common. Recall your reaction to seeing eight-term Senator Patrick Leahy preside over the second Trump impeachment trial, or the contributions of now seven-term Senator Charles Grassley or six-termer Diane Feinstein during the Judiciary Committee's last two confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justices. Second, our more senior members of Congress can be a bit out of touch; think of their questions about Facebook's operation during Mark Zuckerberg's testimony in 2018.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, such senior senators block the ascension of three- and four-term colleagues who are fully capable of leading the body. A two-term limit in the Senate would only penalize the now ready, able, and too-long waiting senators who have no path through the logjam at the top.

The challenge in the House is similar, where Representatives Pelosi (serving her 18 th term), Hoyer (his 20 th) and Clyburn (15 th) have sat atop the Democratic leadership for nearly two decades (since 2003). You need not oppose their reign to ask if others could run the institution. Chris Van Hollen, for example, was serving his seventh term in the House in 2015 and, an already-risen star, could have become Speaker after Pelosi. But his blocked path made his choice to mount an ultimately successful run for the Senate easier, a genuine loss for the House (notwithstanding its gain of Jamie Raskin, his successor).

Hence my call for term limits of more than two decades' service, e.g., four terms in the Senate and 10 to 12 in the House. Such limits need vetting, of course; perhaps three or even five terms would work in the Senate, or, as advocated by Rep. Bill Frenzel fifty years ago, nine terms in the House. Only passing consideration need be given to limits instead on party leadership positions, since they would do nothing about long tenures' other problems and would remain comparatively easy to change – by self-interested veteran legislators. As for exceptions for future lions of the Senate, like the nine-term Ted Kennedy, very few could be allowed if necessary politically, but they could be considered later in the review process.

The key is to get off the two-Senate-term mistake promoted by the Congressional Term Limit Caucus, presidential candidates from Donald Trump in 2016 to Beto O'Rourke and Tom Steyer in 2020, or Senator Ted Cruz earlier this year.

The tangible benefits of a Congress made less sclerotic by longer term limits aren't easy to entertain when so many immediate election reform challenges command our attention. Additionally, there is the question of whether they are worth the effort to amend the Constitution, which imposing any term limit would require.

But our core electoral structure is eroding and, like your favorite underappreciated bridge or critical pipe, needs repair if not replacement. Vetting and debating longer term limits would get us one step closer to addressing this foundational issue, which, whether in years or decades, will demand our attention and action.

Read More

Court to Trump: Your Tariffs Are Illegal

Activists of different trade unions burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump to protest against the recent tariff hikes imposed by the US on India during a demonstration in Kolkata on August 13, 2025.

(Photo by DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Court to Trump: Your Tariffs Are Illegal

The stage for a potential Supreme Court showdown is set after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that most of former President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs were unlawful.

Trump imposed a series of tariffs, citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 as justification. He declared national emergencies over trade deficits and drug trafficking to impose levies on countries, including China, Canada, Mexico, and nearly all U.S. trading partners.

Keep ReadingShow less
Mamdani & The Socialism Canard
File:Zohran Mamdani at the Resist Fascism Rally in Bryant Park on ...

Mamdani & The Socialism Canard

Every time Democrats propose having the government provide new assistance to those in need or a new regulation of business, the Republicans cry out, “This is Socialism.”

But after Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, his fellow Democrats beat them to it. They were aroused primarily, I think, because they feared what a negative reaction to Mamdani from big business would do to Democrats' chances nationally in the upcoming mid-term elections. They should be ashamed of themselves for having become so beholden to big business and for joining Republicans in criticizing by labeling a suggestion for dealing with current societal problems that is consistent with our form of economy.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump-Era Budget Cuts Suspend UCLA Professor’s Mental Health Research Grant

Professor Carrie Bearden (on the left) at a Stand Up for Science rally in spring 2025.

Photo Provided

Trump-Era Budget Cuts Suspend UCLA Professor’s Mental Health Research Grant

UC Los Angeles Psychology professor Carrie Bearden is among many whose work has been stalled due to the Trump administration’s grant suspensions to universities across the country.

“I just feel this constant whiplash every single day,” Bearden said. “The bedrock, the foundation of everything that we're doing, is really being shaken on a daily basis … To see that at an institutional level is really shocking. Yes, we saw it coming with these other institutions, but I think everybody's still sort of in a state of shock.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Border Patrol in Texas
"Our communities fear that the police and deportation agents are one and the same," the authors write.
John Moore/Getty Images

Who deported more migrants? Obama or Trump? We checked the numbers

We received a question through our Instagram account asking "if it's true what people say" that President Barack Obama deported more immigrants than Donald Trump. To answer our follower, Factchequeado reviewed the public deportation data available from 1993 to June 2025, to compare the policies of both presidents and other administrations.

Deportation statistics ("removals") are not available in a single repository, updated information is lacking, and there are limitations that we note at the end of this text in the methodology section.

Keep ReadingShow less