This is ironic. In an earlier post today I mentioned this very same thing as a means to force Republicans to do what’s right for the country and hold Trump accountable. Now Ted Cruz is saying it’s the only way to really drain the swamp:
WAPO – On Election Day, the American people made a resounding call to “drain the swamp” that is modern Washington. Yet on Capitol Hill, we seem mired in the same cycle of complacency: The game hasn’t changed, and the players remain the same. Thankfully, there’s a solution available that, while stymied by the permanent political class, enjoys broad public support: congressional term limits.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump called for enacting term limits, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has endorsed the idea. As soon as the 115th Congress convenes, both of us will move to restore accountability among the entrenched Washington establishment by introducing a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that a member of Congress can serve to three in the House and two in the Senate.
Passing term limits will demonstrate that Congress has actually heard the voice of the people.
In an age in which partisan divisions seem intractable, it is remarkable that public support for congressional term limits is strong regardless of political affiliation — huge majorities of rank-and-file Republicans, Democrats and independents favor enacting this reform. Indeed, according to a Rasmussen survey conducted in October, 74 percent of likely voters support establishing term limits for all members of Congress. This is because the concept of a citizen legislature is integral to the model of our democratic republic.
Though our Founding Fathers declined to include term limits in the Constitution, they feared the creation of a permanent political class that existed parallel to, rather than enmeshed within, American society. As Benjamin Franklin said, “In free governments, the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors. . . . For the former therefore to return among the latter was not to degrade but to promote them.”
We believe that the rise of political careerism in modern Washington is a drastic departure from what the founders intended of our federal governing bodies. To effectively “drain the swamp,” we believe it is past time to enact term limits for Congress.
Milton Friedman argued that a big reason to keep government as small as possible is because the individual is inherently selfish. The more people you have in government, the more that self-interest infringes on the freedoms of the American citizen.
This is exacerbated by political careerism, as Cruz points out. Politicians not only want to get rich, but they want to protect their political careers at almost any cost, even if that means selling the American people out. We’ve seen it time and time again.
So if we can’t depend on the politician to do the right thing, then we must change the rules to force them to change their priorities.