I’m sure many of you watched Tuesday night’s breaking news announcement by President Donald J. Trump, announcing his run for President of the United States.
I cannot imagine that anyone who is in our fight for the convening of a Convention of States could possibly have missed his declaration to pass legislation calling for Term Limits in that speech. Absolute music to our ears. Right?
Not so fast my friends. Yes, it would be wonderful to have legislation passed calling for a law limiting the term of our federal legislators. However, we have a couple of serious problems with this declaration.
I don’t want to dash your great expectations, but first of all our courageous legislators will put up a strong opposition fight against the passage of such a law. Both Democrats and Republicans will not be so keen on limitations to their lucrative and elite positions.
Second, remember that laws passed are laws that can be easily repealed, and I strongly believe that it will not be all that many years before we have a legislative body with a sitting president who would happily repeal such a law.
The only way we can have truly sustainable term limits is through an amendment to our Constitution.
If we can achieve the convening of a Convention of States, proposing an amendment limiting the terms to any federal elected office, and obtaining the ratification by three-quarters of the states, then and only then can we have sustainable term limits.
Yes, amendments to the Constitution can also be repealed. Doing so, however, will be extraordinarily difficult. There will be no massive movement on the part of the people to convene a Convention of States to pass such an amendment. Term limits are way too popular with the citizens of our country.
That leaves Congress to propose an amendment to repeal a term-limiting amendment. They may someday have the votes in both chambers but getting the needed three-quarters of states to ratify such a proposal will be near impossible.
So let's keep our eyes on the real solution and double down on getting the necessary number of states to pass our Resolution calling for the convening of a Convention of States.
This way we not only get term limits, but we get a balanced budget and restrictions on federal government overreach into the affairs of our sovereign states.
In regard to President Trump's calling for term limits, at the very least, we have his public approval.
