Allen Weh on Government Reform

Political spending is free speech: don't limit it

Dark money came about as a result of two incumbent senators trying to protect incumbents. The "Incumbent Protection Act," otherwise known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, restricted the ability of outside challengers and groups to raise money. As a result of its passage, an increased number of 527s, named for their IRS designation, began to spend money on political speech.

Now there's another effort by another incumbent Senator, Tom Udall. This time it goes so far as to amend the Constitution. The founding fathers did not limit the First Amendment by outlining specific types of speech. Most importantly, its purpose was to protect political speech. It is the height of arrogance for someone to think he has the right to change a founding principle of the freest country in the history of the world.

Signed term limit pledge: 6 years House; 12 years Senate.

Organizational Self-Description: U.S. Term Limits, the nation's oldest and largest term limits advocacy group, announced that 14 new signers of its congressional term limits amendment pledge have been elected to the 114th Congress. The group includes five new senators, eight new House members and one House incumbent who signed the pledge for the first time this cycle. The pledge calls for members to co-sponsor and vote for a constitutional amendment limiting House members to three terms (six years) and Senators to two terms (12 years). The USTL President said, "The American people are fed up with career politicians in Washington and strongly embracing term limits as a remedy. Gallup polling shows that 75% of Americans support term limits."

Opposing legal argument: [ACLU, Nov. 7, 2014]: In U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (May 22, 1995), the Court ended the movement to enact term limits for Congress on a state-by-state basis. The Court held that the qualifications for Congress established in the Constitution itself could not be amended by the states without a constitutional amendment, and that the notion of congressional term limits violates the "fundamental principle of our representative democracy 'that the people should chose whom they please to govern them.'"

Opposing political argument: [Cato Institute Briefing Paper No. 14, Feb. 18, 1992]: Several considerations may explain political scientists' open hostility to term limitation:

• Political scientists were instrumental in promoting the professionalization of legislators.
• They are cynical about the attentiveness, general knowledge, and judgmental capacity of the average voter.
• They are committed to the conservation of leadership.
• They perceive attacks on professional politicians as a threat to their own self-proclaimed professionalism.
• And political partisanship may encourage them to oppose term limits.