ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 24, 1996 TAG: 9604240053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Popular with the public, a proposed constitutional amendment to limit the terms of Congress members died Tuesday in a Senate Democratic filibuster. Republicans sought political advantage in the aftermath.
On a 58-42 vote, two short of the 60 needed, lawmakers refused to stop debate on the measure. A short time later, Majority Leader Bob Dole pulled it from the floor.
``We'll bring it up again next year if need be,'' Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., said shortly before the vote. Thompson, elected in 1994, led the fight for the measure, which enjoys support in the 70 percent range in public opinion polls.
All 53 Republicans and five Democrats voted to curtail debate on the proposal. All the votes against were cast by Democrats. Democrat Charles Robb of Virginia voted against stopping debate, or to prevent the measure from reaching a vote.
Term limit advocates outside Congress had long wanted a vote, the better to target candidates for the next few election cycles.
Said Paul Jacob, head of U.S. Term Limits, ``I think those people who voted no ... are going to find that if they're up for election this year, this was not a very good vote for them.''
The measure would have limited senators to two six-year terms and House members to six two-year terms, effective on the amendment's ratification by the required three-fourths of the state legislatures.
The Constitution does not limit the length of congressional service. Lawmakers generally accumulate power through seniority, gradually rising through the years to chairmanships of subcommittees and full committees. Those posts confer enormous power over federal money and programs.
The term limits proposal was part of the House Republicans' Contract With America that helped fuel the GOP election successes of 1994. Even so, the GOP-controlled House rejected it last year on a 227-204 vote, well shy of the two-thirds majority needed.
That made the Senate proceedings largely symbolic, although some GOP strategists hope that Dole, the party's presidential nominee-in-waiting, as well as other Republican candidates will receive credit from limits-minded voters this fall for having brought the measure to the floor.
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