Should Idaho get behind the movement for term limits for Congress? | Opinion

When John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1955, the price of gas was 29 cents per gallon, McDonald’s had just franchised its first store and the polio vaccine was just introduced.

Dingell served for the next 59 years, until 2015, when he was 88.

Dianne Feinstein was 90 years old and had been serving in the U.S. Senate for 30 years when she died — while she was still in office.

Robert Byrd of West Virginia served in the Senate for 51 years, from 1959 until 2010, when he died at the age of 92. He, too, was still in office when he died. Former Sen. Strom Thurmond got elected in the 1954 and served until 2003; he won reelection in South Carolina in 1996, when he was 93.

My goodness, is the job so easy that you can keep doing it right up until the day you die?

Apparently so.

But now, a state lawmaker wants Idaho to join other states in calling for term limits for Congress, according to Idaho Statesman reporting.

Rep. John Shirts, R-Weiser, introduced a resolution that, if passed, would put Idaho on record as supporting the position that U.S. senators and representatives should be allowed to serve only a certain number of years in office. Shirts’ bill does not identify what that total should be but requires Congress to begin the formal process of setting limits.

We wholeheartedly support this resolution — as Idahoans have done in the past — and encourage Idaho legislators to pass it.

Congress is broken, and career politicians have failed to solve this country’s problems. Ensuring that they have to leave office after a certain period of time will have multiple benefits.

Keep in mind that we already have term limits for the president. Why not for Congress, as well?

Idaho’s own U.S. Sen. Jim Risch will be seeking a fourth six-year term in the Senate this year at the age of 82. If he wins and serves out the full term, he’ll be 89 years old when the term ends in 2032.

And he’s Idaho’s junior senator. Mike Crapo, 74, has been in the U.S. Senate even longer, since 1999. U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, 75, has been in the House since 1999.

Talk about career politicians.

Meanwhile, we still have a broken immigration system, a broken health care system, and a national debt of $37 trillion and growing — all issues that have spanned years and years of both parties being in control.

It’s clear Congress isn’t working. It’s certainly not working for the people.

Term limits would ensure that elected officials are working to solve problems based on their conscience — not constantly looking over their shoulder for a primary opponent or bending to pressure from special interest groups.

Take, for example, Thom Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina. He announced that he’s retiring from the Senate to remove himself from any “boundaries I should have in expressing my concern and creating complications for my campaign,” according to an article in Roll Call titled “Tillis Unleashed.”

Unfettered by the prospect of an election, Tillis has since been critical of federal immigration agents’ killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and on Thursday called for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Krisi Noem.

“I think what it comes down to is, obviously, I don’t have to look through a political lens anymore,” he said to Roll Call.

Once a politician is unburdened by the necessity of having to raise outlandish amounts of money from special interest groups for reelection over and over again, they tend to vote and govern the right way — and not the politically expedient way.

Incumbents have a distinct advantage over challengers due to name recognition. When an incumbent announces they’re running for reelection, it deters would-be candidates from throwing their hat in the ring. But when an incumbent announces they’re not running, a wave of candidates — with different ideas and different philosophies — floods into the race, and that’s good for democracy.

Whatever happened to the quaint notion of a citizen legislature? Say what you will about the Idaho Legislature, but our lawmakers mostly have to work for a living, whether it’s teaching, banking, farming or running a business.

Not so with career politicians. After spending 50 years in Washington, D.C., with very little fear of losing your seat, career politicians become out of touch with the people they are supposed to be representing. They don’t know what it’s like to worry about health care, see their premiums rise every year or fear a medical emergency that could bankrupt them.

This is not a partisan position at all. We support term limits for Nancy Pelosi (85), Chuck Schumer (75), Bernie Sanders (84) and Maxine Waters (87) just as much as we support them for Mitch McConnell (83) and Chuck Grassley (92). Combined those six members of Congress have spent well over 200 years in Washington.

We understand the argument that elections are the time and place to remove a lawmaker, but given the amount of money involved in campaigns and how inert so many of our elder statesmen have become, it’s clear that we need a change.

The average age of a U.S. House member is 57.5. The average age of a Senate member is 64.7. Think about that. The average age of a U.S. senator is ... retirement age.

The median age in America is 39.1.

This country will never, ever impose a mandatory maximum age, even though we have minimum ages for everything. But term limits would not only apply a correction to the famously old Congress, but also to the career of “politician.” Hard to think of anything better than that.

And that, of course, is the primary goal of such a movement: to make it so you can’t put the job title “politician” on your tax return decade after decade.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, assistant editor Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.