THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9409300015
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Mr. Smith goes to Washington, serves briefly and nobly in the House or Senate and then makes way for another citizen-legislator untainted by encumbency. A constant infusion of grass-roots sentiments cleanses and invigorates the Congress. This is the term-limits idea touted by Republican politicians (who are not leveling) and millions of voters fed up with the honey pot of power, perks and money that Washington has come to be.
They figure Smith can serve, say, six years in the House or 12 in the Senate before going bad by contact with rotten apples: Ergo, out he goes, whether his record is good, bad or indifferent, after he's served the limited number of terms to be fixed by statute or, as may be required, by constitutional amendment.
The idea has enormous surface appeal. Partly because it posits a wondrous degree of purity and unselfishness among the homefolk. And partly because Washington deserves much of the contempt in which it's held for gridlock, and gimmicks like - well, like the gimmick at hand. Term limits propose to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Citizens always have had the right to limit congressional terms and, periodically, they exercise it. We are in such a period now. Consider: No speaker of the House has been defeated for re-election in 134 years, but the incumbent - Tom Foley, Democrat of Washington state - was all but wrecked in a recent primary election. The Wall Street Journal thinks Washington state voters may eject five incumbent Democrats in November elections. Oklahoma voters, meantime, have tossed out 16-year veteran Mike Synar, a key Clinton ally in the House who spent $400,000 vs. $16,900 spent by his opponent, a retired schoolteacher. And across the South, observers agree that Republicans are about to become the majority party in a once solidly Democratic region.
So what's the beef with the arrangements made by the founding fathers? Why would voters - by limiting terms - curtail their own unlimited freedom to reward exemplary officeholders by keeping them in office?
First off, perhaps, it's a feel-good thing, a punch in the snoot for a Congress which takes too much in pay and benefits and seldom seems far from a scandal. Second, it's a fond hope that in-and-outers will show more courage than career legislators. Third, it's a fix, a remedy on the order of the Gramm-Rudman automatic deficit-reduction machine that went kerflooey after so many said it was the only hope.
All this, though, begs the question of whether the fundamental problem is not at the grass roots rather than in Washington. Gramm-Rudman was a gun-at-the-head filled with blanks because there was no willingness among citizens to pay for the benefits they were consuming. Is there now?
If there is, term limits are as irrelevant as Republican drumbeating for their enactment is fraudulent - and comical.
Newt Gingrich stands on the verge of becoming speaker of the House in which he's already served 16 years. Who can believe he would honor the symbolic ``contract'' he signed last week pledging to terminate service after only six years? Term limits would wipe out the entire Republican leadership in both houses. Is Bob Dole, after 26 years in the Senate, going to fall on his sword rather than become, as is likely, that body's majority leader? Nope. Interestingly, Senate Republicans omit term limits from their re-election agenda; they also omit reference to the fact that they've fallen silent on the subject.
The Gingrich ``contract'' is a farce from end to end, replaying the Reagan voodoo of raising revenues by cutting taxes. That flimflammery tripled the national debt in eight years. Gingrich cannot excuse his pandering by echoing the old Democratic ploy that the debt is just something we owe to ourselves; when his party sold out fiscal conservatism to capture power, it spread Uncle Sam's IOUs around the world. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
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