Congress cant even keep it straight. Our government needs to be reinvigorated with fresh blood by forcing term limitations upon all elected positions.
Straight-up term limits won't work, because running the govt does require a bit of experience. If you have 100% term limits, you'll end up with non-elected clerks running the country because THEY won't have term limits and they'll get laws passed that makes it almost impossible to fire them.
Yes we need term limits, but it must be done like this:
(The core idea is a limit of 2 terms with 20% retained by peer vote, the rest of the rules are mostly explanatory)
1. The "standard" term limit is 2 terms.
2. 20% of the members of congress can be selectively retained under the following conditions.
2.1 The retained members must be re-elected in their district or state (of course).
2.2 Members of congress will select the members who will be retained.
2.2.1 The selection process will use a secret ballot by current members of congress 90 calendar days prior to each election, to determine who is eligible for retention (making them eligible to run for office beyond the 2-term limit).
2.2.2 Each party is allocated retained members at the same proportion of their current party strength.
2.2.3 Members with no party affiliation, or members who's party has only one person in office, will be aggregated as a "third party" and allocated retained members in proportion to their relative strength vs. the congress as a whole, to ensure that small or third parties can retain members.
3. Previous retention status is not grounds for future retention.
4. Once a member fails to be selected as eligible for retention, they can not run for re-election.
5. Members of the House of Representative may run for the Senate after reaching term limits, and vice versa, however each member is only allowed one trip to each body (subject to rule 6).
6. Members removed from congress after reaching term limits may run for office again 10 years after the end of their last term.
7. The speaker of the House is the member with the longest stay in office, not necessarily someone from the party with the most members.
Other options include selecting retained members by peer vote without regard to party affiliation. This could lead to a less partisan approach by the congress as a whole, however it could also result in huge instability if relative party strength shifts dramatically in one election cycle and a lot of experienced retained members are not retained. On the other hand, selecting retained members BEFORE the election should help smooth out the waves and ensure that the voters can over-ride retention choices.
