Stunning Departure

Sense From Congress! Really!

Every once in a while, folks in Congress suggest something that makes sense, and no, this isn’t like saying that even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.

The four Senators who are making sense – in public, no less! – happen to be Republicans. Still, their idea is so compelling that it deserves serious consideration.

The idea: a constitutional amendment that limits Congressional terms to a pair of six-year stints in the Senate and three two-year terms in the House. Not terribly radical, since the 22^nd Amendment limits the President of The United States to two terms. And anyone who thinks a Member of Congress can cause less mischief over a couple of decades than a sitting president over eight years simply hasn’t been paying attention.

The four mavericks bolting from Congress’s shuffling seniority herd are Senators Sam Brownback, Kansas; Tom Coburn, Oklahoma; Jim DeMint, South Carolina, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Texas.

The points they’re making seem obvious and valid, which probably guarantees rough sledding ahead for passage of their proposed amendment, but the points are worth paraphrasing here:

·        The possibility of multiple terms and human nature inevitably focus most of a Member of Congress’s attention on getting re-elected and amassing power.

·        The People’s business and interests become secondary to retaining power.

·        The system is heavily tilted toward incumbency, with the redistricting powers and others focused more on the needs of professional politicians and less on reflecting the needs or hopes of constituents.

A central part of the argument is that those who started our democracy probably didn’t envision anyone serving more than a couple of terms in Congress, which was then an act of public service, not a career. That began to change before the Civil War until a government of the people, by the people and for the people has become a government of the incumbents, by the incumbents and for the incumbents.

In a Congress ruled by The Mighty Lord Seniority, matters tend to be decided not so much by the weight of logic as by the time a member’s weight has been attached to a seat. Seniority mostly determines committee assignments and leadership. Since committees are where the work Congress occasionally does gets done, even ideologues are forced to play the game, ignoring the irony that by the time Fresh Thought reaches the seat of power, it will have unknowingly morphed into Old Orthodoxy.

So Brownback, Coburn, DeMint and Hutchinson are to be praised for seeing a tremendous problem and proposing a common-sense solution.

That’ll probably be one of the charges leveled against them from an at-last united, truly bi-partisan congressional majority which can conceive of no greater good for the nation than their next congressional paychecks.

Still, it was good of the four Republicans to try, even if, as the song suggests, only the good die young.

Which means most in Congress without this amendment will live forever.

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