Trump Proposes Term Limits for Congress

Donald Trump promised to "drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C., pledging to reduce corruption by stopping the revolving door between the government and the lobbying firms that buy influence and pressing for the passage of a constitutional amendment that would institute term limits for Congress.

The GOP nominee announced his support for federal term limits in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Tuesday, a day after proposing a five-point ethics reform package that would bar executive branch officials, members of Congress and their staff members from immediately taking lucrative K Street jobs.

"Decades of failure in Washington, and decades of special interest dealing, must come to an end," Trump told an approving crowd. "We have to break the cycle of corruption, and we have to give new voices a chance to go into government service."

Such a proposal – one aimed at encouraging the election of so-called citizen legislators – is one that is immensely popular. In 2013, a Gallup survey found 75 percent of Americans would vote for term limits for both the House and Senate, if given the option, compared to just 21 percent who say they would oppose implementing such a change.

Supporters say term limits would inject a "continual infusion of fresh blood into the federal legislature [that] will be good for both the Congress and the country."

According to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, incumbency rates infrequently fall below 90 percent for the House.

Dan Greenberg, a former analyst for the Heritage Foundation who served two terms in the Arkansas state legislature, says such limits would reduce the advantage of incumbency, make sure legislators don't become unfamiliar with the challenges of private life and diminish the influence of lobbyists.

"Special-interest lobbyists thrive precisely because of the relationships they have with and the investments they have made in long-term incumbents," he wrote for Heritage.

Opponents of term limits say they would make Congress less effective by removing experienced legislators who have an understanding of how the federal government functions. They say it also encourages "office hopping," in which those who are termed out of one office spend their time seeking their next.

"Now every term-limited legislator looks instantly for the next elected office, be it state Senate, assembly, board of equalization, Congress, statewide office, county supervisor or otherwise," wrote Quentin Kopp, a former California state senator and one-time term limits advocate who came to support the repeal of the state's term limit law.

Writing for U.S. News last year, political science professor Stanley Caress said he found states that have implemented term limits can see the opposite effect of what they intended.

"While term limits have changed the way lobbyists do their business, they have actually increased their influence," he wrote. "The legislators elected after term limits were imposed often lack knowledge of the details of many complex policies and turn to lobbyists for information. These special interest groups actually report that they now work harder 'educating' less knowledgeable legislators."

Even if Trump were to win the White House in November, there's no guarantee his plan to implement term limits would succeed.

In 1994, the Supreme Court determined it could only be done by constitutional amendment, not by law passed by Congress or states limiting the term lengths of their own delegations.

And passing an amendment to the Constitution is difficult. Both houses of Congress would have to pass a joint resolution by a two-thirds vote and then ratified by three-quarters of states, a process that's only been completed 17 times since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. The other method of advancing a constitutional amendment, a national convention, called by Congress at the request of at least two-thirds of states, has never been used.