Do you support congressional term limits?

[GregTheGreat657]

Yes. No one should be allowed to serve more than 16 years in Congress. In my proposal, both time in the House and Senate counts, so someone couldn't just become a Senator after their 16 years in the House were up

[Del Tachi]

No.  All term limits would do is increase the relative influence of lobbyists, special interests, professional Congressional staff, and party leadership.  It's anti-democratic.

[You don't see any blue avatars now]

Elections are good enough term limits, but if we have to have more, then I'm willing to support twelve years each (6 terms in the House, 2 in the Senate).

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No, although Diane Feinstein makes me think a maximum age limit may not be a terrible idea. Sad that would also eliminate Bernie though.

[nicholas.slaydon]

Absolutely not. Term limits should be anathema to anyone who professes to believe in democracy. Nobody should be able to ban someone from running for office, or prohibit someone from voting for that person simply because they passed some arbitrary threshold that says they have been in office too long.

[Mr. Smith]

No.

I do support Supreme Court term limits however.

[TDAS04]

No.

I do support Supreme Court term limits however.

And we can keep term limits on the executive.

[Frodo]

It is tempting, I won't lie, especially if those term limits help deliver us a Democratic leadership more reflective of those they lead as opposed to the living fossils we have now.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No

[Ferguson97]

No.

1. Term-limits are anti-democratic (with the exception of the presidency, due to the unique nature of the office).

2. As DT said, inexperienced legislators will produce worse outcomes.

[Thank you for being a friend...]

Lean towards yes.

Term limits were all the rage in the 90s, then faded away.  It was more popular I think on the Republican side, it was included in the Newt Gingrich agenda from 1994.

I've heard good arguments in favor and against term limits.

I don't think they'd ever get passed at the federal level though.

Just out of curiosity - does anyone know how many states have term limits for state legislatures?  Is it at least half?  because I would imagine that the higher that number is, the more likely it would happen at the federal level as I feel it would bolster the argument that since most state legislatures are term-limited, why shouldn't the Congress?

[Schiff for Senate]

Elections are good enough term limits

Very well said. Let the people judge for themselves. If you want to limit members of Congress to x years, vote accordingly! If your member of Congress has served more than that many years, vote against them in the next election. And if you're happy with their performance and don't think some arbitrary term limit should force them into retirement, vote for 'em. Simple as that. It shouldn't be a question of x years, it should be a question of competence and performance. If you like their record and what they've done and what they've fought for, you should vote for them. If not, you shouldn't.

[Schiff for Senate]

No.

I do support Supreme Court term limits however.

And we can keep term limits on the executive.

No.

1. Term-limits are anti-democratic (with the exception of the presidency, due to the unique nature of the office).

2. As DT said, inexperienced legislators will produce worse outcomes.

No, not even with the presidency is it right or fair or democratic. It's always, definitionally undemocratic. If the people want to elect the same person a third time - why just preemptively stop them from ever making that call? Let them decide and determine and judge for themselves. If a president runs for a third term, and the voters think, no, he's served long enough or otherwise should not serve for any longer, they can always vote against him. If, on the other hand, they are very happy with the president's performance and think he should serve another term, they should absolutely be allowed to vote for him, no question. The Constitution should not outright ban them from making that choice.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

It's not gonna happen 2/3 rds of Congress or 3/4ths of states have to ratify it

[MarkD]

As the saying goes, we already have term limits. Voters already know how to get rid of an incumbent who has been in office for "too long" (whatever that may mean). It is very insulting to treat voters as if they are too stupid to know how, when, or why to get rid of an incumbent who has already been in office for several years. Voters have done that many times.
I went through several pages of Wikipedia looking at US Senate elections for the past 50 years and US House elections for the last 40 years, and writing down the names of Senators who were defeated for reelection after they had already served at least 3 terms in the Senate and Representatives after they had already served at least 8 terms in the House. The names on these lists include members who lost renomination in their primary or who lost reelection in the general election. Behind each name is how many terms they had served in Congress. (For Senators, those numbers are for whole, six-year terms; for Representatives, I have counted some partial terms as a whole term, and split some into half-terms if someone won a special election in November of an odd-numbered year.)

Senators -- Bill Nelson (3), Mary Landrieu (3), Richard Lugar (6), Arlen Specter (5), Russ Feingold (3), Ted Stevens (6), Conrad Burns (3), Tom Daschle (3), William Roth (5), Slade Gorton (3), Al D'Amato (3), Larry Pressler (3), Jim Sasser (3), Lowell Weicker (3), Charles Percy (3), Howard Cannon (4), Herman Talmadge (4), Frank Church (4), Birch Bayh (3), Jacob Javits (4), George McGovern (3), Warren Magnuson (6), Gaylord Nelson (3), Clifford Case (4), Vance Hartke (3), Frank Moss (3), Gale McGee (3), J. William Fulbright (5), Marlow Cook (3), Gordon Allott (3), and Margaret Chase Smith (4).

Representatives -- Dan Lipinski (8.), Steve King (9), Collin Peterson (15), Lacy Clay (10), Eliot Engel (16), Dana Rohrabacher (15), Mike Capuano (10), Joe Crowley (10), John Culberson (9), Pete Sessions (11), Mike Honda (8.), Corrine Brown (12), John Mica (12), Chaka Fattah (11), Randy Forbes (8.), John Tierney (9), Lee Terry (8.), Ralph Hall (17), Nick Rahall (19), Pete Stark (20), Howard Berman (15), Cliff Stearns (12), Don Manzullo (10), Leonard Boswell (8.), Roscoe Bartlett (10), Steve Rothman (8.), Dennis Kucinich (8.), Tim Holden (10), Silvestre Reyes (8.), Jim Oberstar (18), Gene Taylor (10.5), Ike Skelton (17), Earl Pomeroy (9), Paul Kanjorski (13), John Spratt (14), Chet Edwards (10), Solomon Ortiz (14), Rick Boucher (14), Alan Mollohan (14), Chris Shays (11), William Jefferson (9), Wayne Gilchrest (9), Joe Knollenberg (8.), Nancy Johnson (12), Clay Shaw (13), Jim Leach (15), Charles Taylor (8.), Curt Weldon (10), Phil Crane (17.5), Charles Stenholm (13), Martin Frost (13), Connie Morella (8.), Thomas Sawyer (8.), George Gekas (10), Matthew Martinez (9), Sam Gejdenson (10), Harold Volkmer (10), Dan Rostenkowski (18), Neal Edward Smith (18), Dan Glickman (9), Mike Synar (8.), Jack Brooks (21), Tom Foley (15), William Alexander, Jr., (12), Robert Lagomarsino (9), Marty Russo (9), Carroll Hubbard (9), Jerry Huckaby (8.), Joseph Early (9), Guy Vander Jagt (13), Tom Coleman (8.), Ron Marlenee (8.), Thomas Downey (9), Stephen Solarz (9), Clarence Miller (13), Mary Rose Oakar (8.), Mickey Edwards (8.), Robert Kastenmeier (16), Bill Chappell (10), Fernand St. Germain (14), Clarence Long (11), Joseph Minish (11), Abraham Kazen (9), Donald Clausen (10), Ed Derwinski (8.), Tom Railsback (8.), Paul Findley (11), Margaret Heckler (8.), and William Wampler (8.).

That list even includes a couple of chamber leaders, such as Speaker Tom Foley and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

On another note,

It's not gonna happen 2/3 rds of Congress or 3/4ths of states have to ratify it

My dear, Congress is not the only one that has the power to propose amendments. The states can do so, if 2/3s of them summon a national convention of states. Here is a movement that is trying to adopt term limits on Congress, federal judges, and federal bureaucrats without having Congress propose an amendment:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=264160.msg5647960#msg5647960

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

Creating legislative term limits is the perfect example of a policy proposal that, on the surface, seems to be a relatively intuitive way to reduce how out-of-touch politicians are, but when you actually think about it for a second and consider all of the available information we have on its effects in reality, it's revealed to be a very bad idea.