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by dustinblake 3398 days ago
There's a major problem with term limits. Let's say we fix the House of Representatives so that instead of constantly having to run for (re)election with two year terms, we change them to 4 year terms but limit them to 2. Ignoring the major changes that the committee chair/assignment system would require, no longer having a wide range of seniority, the entire body would suffer because the most experienced any legislator could be would be those elected to their second term, i.e. years 5-8 of their House career.

Why is this not good? Who also resides in Washington DC and interacts with legislators, with virtually no limits on their length of involvement in this game? Lobbyists. You set up a system where the Legislators are effectively perpetual newbies with an extremely broad scope of issues they must interact with and influence for the best. Lobbyists with just a decade of experience will know far more than any legislator. There's already a lot of legislation is introduced that's provided verbatim from lobbyists... expect that to get worse, not better, with an even more inexperienced elected officials.

We already have a system of term limits, it's called electing someone else. Don't make it impossible to keep an excellent legislator who has the broad support of their constituents; make it easier to elect someone new to replace a bad one. With the insane costs of campaigning and getting elected, we'd all be better served by simply reducing that barrier to a minimum. Publicly funded campaigns also remove the influence of financial contributions.