Let’s Have Term Limits Where They Belong by KTK

Senator Jim DeMint (Asshole – CSA) has proposed a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on federal officeholders (3 terms for Representatives, 2 for Senators). Leaving aside the convenient fact that this gives Senators twice as long in office as Representatives, the proposal is not the craziest thing DeMint has ever done (it would be quite a chore to identify the single craziest thing DeMint has ever done).

There is an argument for term limits – they would help break up the club of entrenched interests in Washington, and move public officeholding closer to an act of public service and away from its status as pork-barrel sinecure. But the arguments against term limits are well-known as well. Keeping the people with actual authority in a revolving door would simply mean that the true entrenched interests – staff and lobbyists – would have a free rein, while the elected officials would spend most of their time in office trying to get the hang of things.

The degree to which Congressmembers currently rely on lobbyists for their understanding of issues is truly frightening, but some do garner their own expertise on specific issues and can act independently to become real leaders on the matters they care about. A three-term limit would simply guarantee that, in any given year, no matter what the issue was, no member of the entire House of Representatives would have more than 5 years’ experience dealing with that issue at the federal level, about half of them would have no more than 3 years, and about one third of them would be lame ducks. If you think corporate lobbyists are a problem now, how would it be when at least a third of the House, in every cycle, has never been there before? On balance, having a Congress that actually knows what it’s doing seems much preferable to leaving the entire system the way it is now but systematically forcing out anyone who gains any real experience or knowledge.

But, as I say, there are at least some reasonable considerations on both sides. DeMint, of course, eschews those in favor of dressing up this Washington perennial with a too-familiar mix of right-wing resentment, denial, fantasy history, and pointlessly irrelevant references to the Bible:

“Some say only long-serving, seasoned elites have the skills to lead the people, but that’s exactly what we have today and how do you think it’s working out for us?” said Senator DeMint. “It wasn’t the ‘people’ who gave us a $12 trillion debt, an IRS tax code seven times longer than the Bible, over 1,700 departments of the federal government, trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, $100 trillion long-term shortfall in Social Security and Medicare, the Wall Street and auto bailouts, and the pending health care takeover.

Hard to know where to start, here.

First, I might note that DeMint is right that it wasn’t “the people” who gave us a multi-trillion-dollar federal deficit, did everything they could to destroy Social Security, or made the Wall Street bailout necessary. It was the Republican Party. If he’s that concerned about those issues, you’d think he might have done something about them during his 10-year tenure in Congress as a member of that party, 9 years of it under the Republican president most responsible for all of that.

I might also point out that the federal government doesn’t actually have 1,700 departments. It has 15. (That would be almost 1% accuracy, which is not that bad for a Republican . . . but still.) And there is no “$100 trillion shortfall” in Social Security and Medicare (combined); in fact, there’s no shortfall at all in Social Security, and far less than is claimed in Medicare. Social Security, at its present reserves and income levels, can pay full benefits for another estimated 28 years, and about 75% benefits thereafter through the baby boomers’ retirement years. Returning the program to full solvency would require nothing more than repealing the Bush tax cuts for the top 1% of earners; the total net present value of making up the entire shortfall full benefit payout through the projected future would be about $5.3 trillion. Medicare is a more serious problem, but its total long-term shortfall is estimated at about $37 trillion over 75 years; a permanent solution today would cost about $13 trillion. (Estimates of over $80 trillion result from assuming that nothing will ever change, and then projecting current trends out to infinity. Seriously. In technical language, this is a statistical technique known as “crazy talk”. Naturally, it is the one the Republicans rely on.) Luckily, even that shortfall would be considerably reduced by changes incorporated into the healthcare reform bill that just passed – a stronger bill would have brought even greater savings. DeMint will have an opportunity to demonstrate his concern for Medicare spending by passing a robust public option plan with strong rate-negotiating provisions when the bill hits the Senate next week.

And of course, the business bailouts are what generated the end of the Bush Depression and current GDP and stock-index growth, as well as the slowdown (though not turnaround) in unemployment trends, in keeping with standard economic theory that the Republicans had ignored and voodooed away for 30 years.

In short, government works pretty good (or at least it does a decent job of reversing, under the Democrats, the problems that the Republicans caused). And this is to say nothing of the Congressional efforts on civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, gay rights, poverty relief, national and rural infrastructure – all things that right-wingers had contrived to deny to some of “the people” and that Congress gave them, through programs usually initiated, and today solely supported, by the Democrats. (I suspect that’s more than a small part of his concern over too-effective government.)

But what’s really striking, underneath all that ignorance and plain factual distortion, is the familiar right-wing anarchistic resentment that drives DeMint’s plan to cripple Congress. As always, the simple fact that government exists at all is what bothers DeMint. What possible purpose is there in counting the number of government departments (even if you inflate it by 113 times)? What possible conclusion can we draw from measuring the length of the tax code in units of Bible texts? Only this: if you hate government in and of itself, the fact that there is any of it is bad – and the fact that there is (in your mind) a lot of it is very bad. So the fact that government agencies have lots of offices, or the tax code has lots of pages, is by itself proof that they are evil. Remember “government is the problem”? Reagan, for once, wasn’t kidding. (This also explains why the GOP is constantly opposing Democratic proposals with weird fantasy org-charts that they deliberately make as complicated as possible – again, the fact that there are offices is proof in itself that something is bad.) DeMint’s problem with Congress is not that the members serve too long. His problem is that there’s a Congress.

Add to that, of course, his weird obsession with “elites” – a fad term that seems to have become some sort of mantra on the right wing some time ago. You can understand how easily these people would develop an inferiority complex: when everyone else knows more and is more rational than you, you start to think you’re being looked down on by your intellectual superiors – because you are. But that’s not the work of “elites” – its the natural reaction of normal people to factually groundless, reactionary, superstitious nonsense.

It’s clear that removing the destructive, greedy, and selfish elements from Congress would bring about a major improvement. But that merely means we need term limits for Republicans. I’ll be looking for Jim DeMint to show some leadership on that issue.

UPDATE: Clarified [in bold] the discussion of projected Social Security and Medicare deficits.