1) term limits on senators and representatives.
First, as
@CWSooner pointed out, this would require a Constitutional Amendment and those are hard to achieve.
Second, I wholeheartedly disagree. I realize that this is an unpopular position but I've seen term limits in action and the ACTUAL impact is NOT the INTENDED impact.
Here in Ohio we enacted term limits for State Representatives and State Senators a while back. It was introduced as a voter initiative and passed overwhelmingly. Do you want to know who benefited?
- The bureaucrats,
- The lobbyists, and
- The Political Parties.
I'll explain:
Before term-limits individual State Reps and State Senators were powerful political entities unto themselves. They were answerable only to the voters so they could go after bureaucrats, ignore lobbyists, and buck their party. They might not have done those things as much as you or I might like, but at least they COULD if they chose to.
Now State Reps and State Senators are NOT political entities unto themselves. They have a lifespan of just eight years. Lazy and inefficient bureaucrats KNOW that they will live longer than the Reps and Senators that allegedly oversee them. If a Rep or Senator comes after them all they have to do is stall and the Rep or Senator in question will be gone in a few years.
Then there is another problem. No first-time candidate could ever admit this but the reality is that a new State Rep or State Senator needs at least two years and probably closer to four to figure out what the heck is going on. A new State Rep or Senator doesn't know which bureaucrats are conscientious people doing their best to run their departments and which ones are borderline criminals just riding on the system. By the time a State Rep/Senator figures these things out, they are on their way out the door and there is nothing they can do to fix the underlying issues.
The REALLY big winners from Term Limits have been the Political Parties. Back before Term Limits, as I stated above, Reps and Senators were entities unto themselves. The Parties had little or no leverage over them and they could simply choose to do whatever they thought was right regardless of whether it was in keeping with their Party's wishes. The reality now is that State Reps and Senators KNOW that they will need a new job in a few years. They ONLY way to ensure that they will get a job in a few years is to be a loyal partisan. Then you can expect your party to provide for you once you are term-limited out.
I know a LOT of people who support term limits and I think that nearly all of them have their hearts in the right place. They all *THINK* that term limits will fix problems that they see. The fact is that the lot of you are dead wrong. Term Limits make the existing problems worse.