Fourteen state legislatures have passed a resolution asking for something Congress could, in theory, hand them for free: term limits on its own members. They aren’t asking Congress to pass a law. They’re applying for an Article V convention, the slower path to a constitutional amendment, because the faster path doesn’t exist. Twenty more states have to sign on before that convention can even be called. It would be far easier if Congress could just pass a statute capping House and Senate service the way the 22nd Amendment caps the presidency. It can’t. Not won’t. Can’t.

I’ve made the policy case for term limits before. This is the harder argument nobody makes: Congress lacks the constitutional tool to do this to itself, regardless of the votes. Two joint resolutions sit in the current Congress proposing a term-limits amendment the ordinary way, a two-thirds vote in both chambers. They will die there, the way every version has died for three decades, because no supermajority of incumbents has ever voted itself out of office. The 14 states already understand this. That’s why they skipped the vote Congress will never take.