President Trump on Friday questioned why the Republican Party imposes term limits for committee chairs, suggesting it’s why there has been an exodus of House Republicans choosing not to defend their seats in the 2018 midterm elections.
“The House is probably tougher,” Trump said about whether Republicans will be able to hang onto their majority in the lower chamber. “We have a lot of chairmen that left because they’re chairmen for six years, and then they don’t want to stay because they can’t be chairmen.”
House Judiciary chair Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; Financial Services chair Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas; Appropriations chair Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J.; Oversight chair Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.; and Science, Space and Technology chair Lamar Smith, R-Texas, are among the chairmen leaving Congress. Neither Gowdy nor Frelinghuysen served six years as chairmen of the aforementioned committees. Gowdy was appointed to lead in June 2017, and Frelinghuysen took the helm in late 2016.
“I don’t know if that’s a great policy because we have a lot of chairmen that are leaving, and they’re leaving because when you’re the chairman of a big committee, you don’t want to go back and just sit there and not be a chairman anymore. So, I don’t know if that’s a good policy. I guess it gets other people up there, but in the meantime, we have a lot of chairman that have no choice but to leave,” Trump said while addressing the Ohio Republican Party’s annual state dinner.
Extending the self-imposed limits, Trump said, would make more experienced Republicans want to remain in Congress.
“I like a little more experience. I think we can certainly go longer than 6 years … but I think we have some good candidates taking their place,” he said.
Term limits were enforced by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1994 in order to allow younger members to work their way up the ranks.
