The USA Today’s editorial board thinks Marco Rubio is a moron for proposing a constitutional convention. Specifically, they note that a constitutional convention, although provided for as an option for amending the Constitution, would be a messy and unpredictable process, and quite likely to produce contentious results that divide the people.
They also dutifully point out that two out of the three changes that Rubio wants to make are horrible ideas:
There are also good reasons why amendments requiring a balanced budget or imposing term limits have not gotten out of Congress. Term limits on lawmakers would empower lobbyists and congressional staff — if all members of Congress were rookies, people who can stay in Washington would have even greater influence than they already do. A balanced budget amendment sounds like a good way of forcing politicians to do what they claim they want but almost never produce. But tying the government’s hands could have serious consequences during wartime, when spending surges, or during an economic downturn, when government borrowing can stop a recession from becoming a depression, as it did in 2007-09.
Rubio’s third proposal, term limits for Supreme Court Justices, is definitely a defensible position and wouldn’t fundamentally alter the shape of the country or cripple the efficiency and effectiveness of government. But, it’s also an idea that might have a snowball’s chance of passing through the ordinary, conventional amendment process.
The Balanced Budget Amendment, on the other hand, is the stupidest (or, perhaps, most dangerous) idea ever conceived, and term limits for lawmakers is premised on a couple of really bad ideas. The first is that the people are incapable of responsibly making their own decisions about whom to elect as their representatives. And the second is that the best way to make lawmakers more accountable to the people is to prevent them from facing reelection (which is their accountability moment). The effect of term limits is (and would be in the U.S. Congress) precisely what the USA Today’s editorial board predicts. Novice lawmakers are more reliant on staff and lobbyists and haven’t had time to become deeply knowledgable about areas they are responsible for overseeing, funding, and regulating. You get a dumber government that is more in the pocket of special interests.
The reaction to Rubio’s proposal is lukewarm even at the National Review, where renowned “Constitutional scholar” Jim Geraghty took out his crayons and tried and failed to respond coherently. Geraghty claims that Rubio’s solution to big government “puts the cart before the horse” because the real problem is an “American populace that doesn’t know what’s in the Constitution, can’t be bothered to learn, and doesn’t particularly care.” However, it’s not really the populace’s fault: “The problem isn’t really the words on the parchment; the problem is the people who are making the laws and the courts that interpret them.” That’s two different “real problems” but he’s got a third:
…[Mark] Levin writes, “the situation today is that the federal government re-writes, modifies, usurps, defies, etc. the Constitution virtually at will. As such, the Constitution as written and intended is meaningless in many respects.” If that’s the case, how can we be certain the government wouldn’t just go back to ignoring the Constitution after the convention?
In other words, if the real problem is a largely Constitutionally-illiterate electorate… would a convention of the states solve it?
So, to recap here, Rubio’s idea isn’t a good one because a) the populace is illiterate, b) the lawmakers and the judges are illiterate, and c) what’s actually in the Constitution is irrelevant.
What goes unquestioned are the merits of these three Constitutional amendments.
I know it’s silly season and that candidates are looking to make some kind of splash with their party’s primary voters and caucus-goers, but it’s pretty pathetic when your best pandering effort relies not on what you’ll do as president but on amending the Constitution. It’s especially bad when you’re saying that you’ll have to rely on a provision of the Constitution that hasn’t been used since the original convention. And it goes off the charts as pathetic when the amendments themselves are horrible ideas.
But, at least it’s all consistent with the idea that our government is made up of horrible people who spend too much money, right?
His ideas for amendments are silly but that doesn’t mean that the idea for a Constitutional Convention is bad.
The Convention can only propose amendments the states would still have to ratify them.
WRT the Supreme Court, I don’t know if term limits is a good idea but maybe creating a term where they have to get reconfirmed might be better. Say 15 year term or something. I haven’t really thought that one through (much like Rubio) but it’s an idea worth exploring.
Confirming sitting justices is a very bad idea. It makes them actual political animals instead of limited political animals. Judges (at least federal judges) should not be looking over their shoulder at congress.
Term limits (15,18,20, whatever) or age limits (70,75, 80) have their bad sides, serious ones, but they are defensible as being open, transparent and definable.
I am actually quite worried about the mental health of a judge. I think Scalia has Alzheimer’s or something similar. I know he’s always been a RWNJ and fervent Xtian, but he’s never been this OPEN about it. I saw this behavior in my Grandfather and Grandmother towards the end of their lives. I’m sure that if I’m wrong, I’ll get called on this fast.
All else being equal, term limits would make the most sense. It is obvious that using age limits to address the issue is using a sledgehammer when a scapel is needed. Term limits will also decrease the probability of mental illness in a sitting judge. At least, it limits its effects to a specific time frame.
And spare me the “its not fair” argument. The whole “you get to be a federal judge until you die” thing is unfair.
I’m fine with creating a term for federal judges as long as it’s outside of our political cycle like 10, 15, 20 years
I’m against term limits (including President) for political office. It empowers special interests and besides there is already a very powerful term limit called elections.
The one problem with your arguement, and Booman’s, is that big business and the MIC already controls Congress.
then vote them out
term limits put even more power in the hands of special interests because they’re the only ones that know how anything works
Why can’t this responsibility be devolved to the staff and to the party apparatus? Why must it be solely in the hands of special interests?
How much knowledge and responsibility are you expecting out of our politicians, anyway?
neither the party or staffs are elected that’s why and the parties (especially the DNC) don’t have the money to run campaigns let alone be responsible for the institutional memory of such an important part of our republic.
The republic comes first
Agreed. Term limits for elected officials is a bad idea.
Like they are not political animals now?
18 year terms, no renewal. Every 2 years, a justice steps down, and a new one is reappointed. There would be no filibuster for the SCOTUS appointments. If a SC justice died mid-term, a new justice could be appointed to serve out his/her term, not longer. If the term was shorter than 9 years, that person would be eligible for re-appointment for a full term if younger than 70.
This idea would depoliticize the court, regularize the process of appointment, and take away the huge drama of the court appointment process. Since the court is important, I would time the re-appointment cycle at the 1 Y/3 Y point, in June.
It’s the justices’ understanding of their jobs that either politicizes (in a partisan sense) or depoliticizes the Supreme Court. After turning down Haynesworth, a replacement nominee who later served in prison, and Bork, Democrats gleefully seated Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and Roberts with little vetting. Well Thomas did get an accusatory hearing that became the casus belli for going after the Clintons, but no actual vetting.
The problem is the Congress. And the Supreme Court majority of the moment.
Tinkering with mechanics doesn’t fix that.
Just look what happened when Congress passed the line-item veto, Ronald Reagan’s magic fix for the budget. Bill Clinton got it passed; it didn’t outlast his term.
You can’t reform a corrupt process without reforming the corruption. And the corruption these days extends to the information that voters are given about what their government is doing. And voters are perfectly find voting on the basis of stuff that is provably untrue. And the government budget being like a family bank account involves several large untruths and other failures in accurate analogy. Not to mention honesty about how family budgets actually do operate in the Twenty-Teens.
Appointed in odd numbered years, not in the heat of an election.
One other problem that term limits for congressmen create is that you get people who know that they can do whatever the hell they like and (almost) never have to face the consequences, because they’ll be term limited out of the job eventually (and likely into some cushy wingnut welfare position). One only needs to look at the mess that we here in Michigan are in to see the folly of legislature term limits.
Term limits don’t cause that. Just look at the federal government. Specifically the House and Senate. Amd what happens in states, like Kansas, Texas and a lot of the south, where the Democratic Party is non-existent? Elections there aren’t exactly accountability moments.
CA term limits have been a semi-disaster for two reasons. Once a lawmaker has enough experience to be competent and effective, he/she has to find another job. (What a completely stupid standard for elected representatives.) With more turnover in state legislative offices, some expected that it would build a better and larger bench for both parties. It hasn’t. It’s more like musical chairs with none of them in any position long enough to develop enough of a track record to get public respect. Voters should stop looking for and passing gimmicks that make it easier for them to shirk their responsibility.
Good.
People should vote for ideology and organizational efficacy, as represented by the party, not for individuals. We’ve long passed the event horizon where individual expertise and intuition can substitute for group wisdom and adherence to a political philosophy. A district should be represented by the [Winner] Party w/ its staff, experts, and party contacts, with the actual politician themself serving as nothing more than a figurehead and general manager.
The sooner politicians become rubber stamps and stewards of the party, the better. I grow weary of ignorant deciders and America’s fascination with individualism.
Quite the opposite of what the founders of this country intended and hoped for: no political parties at all.
A hundred years ago the choice would have been between the DEM Jim Crow, pro-war party and the GOP oligarch, isolationist party. What a choice.
At least when a party runs the electoral apparatus instead of individuals, there’s an incentive to remove individual miscreants. Assholes like Pa Ferguson would’ve never been tolerated in a less devolved system. And I think that the absolute value of marginal utility of getting to elect a Sanders is smaller than the negative utility having to live with either Edwin Edwards (another suboptimal candidate who never would’ve been tolerated in a system where the party had more control over its minions) over David Duke.
And anyway, it’s not like awful political philosophies weren’t able to get their demands implemented before party politics became formalized despite the Brave, Great Men Of History individually opposing them. We still got the Alien and Sedition Acts from Adams and an economic depression from Jefferson.
Even now we have to put up with scum like Rahm Emanuel and DWS, among others. How are either really accountable? They aren’t. Rahm raised how much money compared to Garcia?
Once a lawmaker has enough experience to be competent and effective, he/she has to find another job.
Look at the GOP now? They don’t care about governing, at all, no matter how long they’ve been there.
True. A reason why CA term limits have only been a semi-disaster is that it got rid of long-term GOP seat warmers and they’ve had difficulty finding enough like that willing to occupy the seats for a limited period of time. So, the CA GOP has become the rump party.
Pun intended? Thumbs up!
Yes. A rarity for me as I’m not good at making puns.
Give me ammendments mandating public financing of campaigns, and limiting campaigns to 90 days along with banning campaigning the last two days before the vote as in many civilized nations. I think that would work a lot better than term limits.
A balanced budget is a truly idiot idea. It reminds me of the gold standard, where you have to dig your money out of the ground. With a required balanced budget a downturn in the economy could quickly become a recession or a depression, especially given our divided and dysfunctional Government. Better to dig money out of the ground for gold which likely ranks second to the balanced budget idea. We already have one idiot wants to go back to the gold standard. Where do these people come from?
I always like to point out that if the Continental Congress had been operating under a balanced budget rule, Washington wouldn’t have had an army.
Neither would Roosevelt have been able to field two large standing Military forces to fight the Axis on two fronts while simultaneously supplying the British Russian and Chinese Nationalist armies.
A balanced budget requirement could have cost us Europe Asia and large section of Africa in Axis hands, while we were still stuck deep in an economic depression.
The effect of term limits is (and would be in the U.S. Congress) precisely what the USA Today’s editorial board predicts. Novice lawmakers are more reliant on staff and lobbyists and haven’t had time to become deeply knowledgeable about areas they are responsible for overseeing, funding, and regulating. You get a dumber government that is more in the pocket of special interests.
They are more reliant on lobbyists now and Congress doesn’t have term limits. Is there one Republican anywhere who cares about being knowledgeable on the issues?
I prefer term limits because they shift accountability from the individual representative to the party apparatus, experts, and staff. You lose out on individual expertise, but even that advantage became quite marginal on the dawn of the second Industrial Revolution where society became too complicated for any individual to get a handle on. There’s a reason why dictators become more incompetent every generation. We should be training politicians as lieutenants and middle managers, not lords and polymaths.
Of course, I’m one of those people who think that political parties are not only a necessary evil but a generic good. Of course of course, I also pretty much hold the idea of Great Men in utter contempt.
Mexico limits congresspeople to a single term. This greatly weakens the Chamber of Deputies and empowers the President. Under the PRI, it basically turned the Congress into a rubber stamp, as legislators knew their terms were brief and they would therefore need a patronage position from the Executive.
In Washington, you’d serve you 6 years (or whatever) and then go work on K Street, empowering the permanent government even more.
A feature not a bug. Where was this proposal generated? ALEC? A corporate funded think tank?
I’d like all the people to vote on converting the USA to a European parliamentary form. Abolish the Senate and devolve the Presidential powers to the Speaker.
I’d like some of what you’re smoking.
It has it’s problems but makes more sense than a balanced budget amendment or gold standard amendment.
Getting sick of divided do-nothing government.
Here is a small tale of a balanced budget. Gov Rick Snyder of Michigan wanted to balance the budget in Flint so he took over the city had them get off water from Lake Huron and take it from the river. That river was a dump site for GM and others for the last hundred years or so. Save money and balance the budget. What’s not to like? A republican hero arrived to show us how it’s done. Now the people of Flint have lead poisoning. Good job Rick. When are they going to arrest you and your enforcers. Let’s see Chrisite shuts down a bridge and Snyder poisons a city. Now another fool has ideas how to make government more efficient. Where do they find these nut jobs?
“Efficiency” is often code for cutting corners and short-term costs. Regulations and regulatory agencies add inefficiencies to a system, but those seeming inefficiencies are often what leads to better, more stable, systems and lower long-term costs. IOW, there are hidden benefits to inefficiency.