Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul reaffirmed his support for congressional term limits Thursday, including statutory restrictions on speaker of the House.
“I’m for term limits for all members of the House as well as members of the Senate,” Paul told Fox News’ Gretchen Carlson Thursday afternoon. “Right now, we have term limits for chairmanship positions in the House and Senate and I don’t think it would be a bad idea to have term limits for all federal lawmakers.”
The GOP presidential hopeful, who holds the No. 10 spot in the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings, said the number one complaint he hears from conservatives across the country is that congressional Republicans are failing to get things done.
“They don’t think we’re doing enough — that we sort of just preemptively admit defeat,” Paul said.
He added, “Every elected congressman and every elected senator should be very aware that the grassroots is unhappy. They’re very upset that Washington is not using our full force.”
“We have both the Senate and the House, there is no excuse for us to not stand up to the president and say enough is enough,” he continued.
The Kentucky senator has previously said he supports passage of an amendment that would limit House members to three two-year terms, and senators to two six-year terms. He has not specified what kind of limit he would place on congressional leadership positions, including speaker of the House.
“I ran for office because we have too many career politicians. I believe it now more than ever,” Paul said during his presidential announcement in April. “We limit the president to two terms. It’s about time we limit the terms of Congress.”
According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll, Paul earns 3 percent support among Republican voters nationwide. He is expected to spend three days in the early voting state of Iowa next week where he will meet with young supporters at 11 different college campuses.
