Donald Trump’s idea to impose congressional term limits is one that has always made House and Senate lawmakers cringe, and one he’d find almost impossible to turn into a reality even if he does win the White House.
It’s a proposal that lawmakers know resonates with voters, who rate their approval for Congress in the low teens and single digits. But the vast majority of those serving in Congress despise the idea of capping how many years they can keep their jobs, and that opposition has kept the idea down since it was first rejected in 1789.
Simply put, the votes to limit lawmakers’ terms aren’t there, and never have been.
The hurdle to imposing term limits is substantial. It would require a constitutional amendment, which must first win approval of two-thirds of lawmakers in both the House and Senate.
Term limit votes popped up regularly in the House and Senate in the 1990s, the last time there was a real push to impose them and after the Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that states could not impose congressional term limits. But the measures have always fallen short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage.
A 1996 Senate Judiciary Committee Report laid out the failed attempts, beginning in 1789 when Rep. Thomas Tucker proposed a one-year Senate term that a person could hold for up to five years in any six-year period, and a two-year House term that a person could hold for up to six years of every eight-year period.
The measure was killed in committee.
Lawmakers made other failed attempts to pass term limits in 1945, 1947, 1978, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1996 and 1997, according to legislative records.
The 1990s brought a strong push for term limits. While nothing passed Congress, more than a dozen lawmakers won House seats in 1994, 1996 and 1998 after promising voters they would serve only three terms. But the vast majority abandoned the pledge and remained in office for much longer.
“The movement has all but ended,” then-Rep. Ken Lucas, R-Ky., said at the time, before losing his bid for a fourth term.
Term limit reform continued into the 2000s but with waning enthusiasm from lawmakers. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., famously pledged in 2000 to only serve three terms in the House. But he called that pledge a “mistake” in 2006, ran again, served until 2013, and is now a senator.
Former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who now heads the conservative Heritage Foundation, was among the few who kept up the fight. He introduced a proposal to limit senators to two terms and House lawmakers to three terms. The Senate rejected the measure by a vote of 24 to 75 in February 2012.
In the House, two lawmakers have revived the effort, though it’s not getting much traction so far.
Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa, and Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, formed the Congressional Term Limits Caucus, which calls for the term limits proposed by DeMint.
Blum said term limits are needed to bring fresh ideas and innovation to Washington that are now lacking.
“The root of this problem is that politicians are incentivized by the system to care more about retaining their position than doing what is best for the country,” Blum said when he announced the term limit caucus. “Our founding fathers never intended for public service to be a career, rather, serving in Congress was designed to be a temporary sacrifice made for the public good.”
