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YoYoMoMa t1_ivkm13o wrote

Yeah. Lemme dig it back up.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/01/18/five-reasons-to-oppose-congressional-term-limits/

Take lobbyist influence, for example. Term limit advocates contend lawmakers unconcerned with reelection will rebuff special interest pressures in favor of crafting and voting for legislation solely on its merits. However, the term limit literature commonly finds that more novice legislators will look to fill their own informational and policy gaps by an increased reliance on special interests and lobbyists. Relatedly, lawmakers in states with term limits have been found—including from this 2006 50-state survey—to increase deference to agencies, bureaucrats, and executives within their respective states and countries simply because the longer serving officials have more experience with the matters.

Advocates also suggest that limiting the number of terms lawmakers can serve will ultimately result in fewer members looking to capitalize on their Hill relationships and policymaking experience by becoming lobbyists themselves. Establishing term limits, however, would likely worsen the revolving door problem between Congress and the private sector given that mandating member exits ensures a predictable and consistently high number of former members available to peddle their influence. The revolving door phenomenon is considered a normative problem without term limits and relatively few departing members per cycle. With term limits, the number of influential former members would drastically increase, giving more private sector landing spots to members whose time has run out. More lobbying firms would have members able to advance their special interests with former members making use of their relationships and deep understanding of the ways of the Hill.

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baltinerdist t1_ivl0ynn wrote

I would be in favor of fairly expansive term limits to help mitigate the concerns but still encourage a little bit of turnover there. Something like 18 years for House and 18 years for Senate. Between the two, you would have the ability to have a 36 year career on the Hill which is more time than many people spend in one job.

That gives plenty of time for continuity and knowledge building but prevents any one person from setting up shop their entire life and preventing anyone from the next generation from having a chance due to the incumbency advantage.

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YoYoMoMa t1_ivl1csu wrote

I think that might be acceptable. But then again we would lose some expertise in a job that is insanely difficult to learn and relies heavily on institutional and procedural knowledge.

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