29-03-2025
Congressional term limits aren't the answer to Washington's problems. Elections are
Editor's note: Below are the reasons three South Carolina state representatives gave at a Feb. 4 House Judiciary committee meeting for voting against a resolution calling for a change to the U.S. Constitution to impose term limits on members of Congress. The committee approved House Concurrent Resolution 3008 on a 13-11 vote, and the House subsequently passed it onto the state Senate, where it sits now.
Rep. John King, D-York: 'I believe we do have term limits. Every two years people can decide whether they want to send us back here as we've seen. People have voted some of our colleagues out of office, and you have (incumbent politicians come up for re-election0 every four years in the Senate, six years in the U.S. Senate.
'Term limits to me are every time we run for office. We should not be telling people who they want to represent them on the state or federal level. That's why we have districts. And those people in our districts have sent us here and they have determined who they want to be their representatives. So I think that if you feel like D.C. needs to have term limits then you need to be doing something about term limits here in South Carolina.
'I just have a problem with us wanting to carve out our congressional folk and say they should have term limits and then not look at the South Carolina General Assembly and not have term limits for us. I just believe that we have what we have as term limits presently. When people go to the polls every two years they can decide who they want to elect and be their representatives.'
Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg: 'I personally don't believe in term limits. I think that people are going to vote for who they want to vote for. If they like you and you're doing a good job and you're pleasing the majority of your constituents, they'll keep sending you back.
'To me, term limits arbitrarily tie the hands of the general public. Because even if they wanted to keep someone they thought was doing a good job — or alternatively they maybe didn't think they were doing a good job but they thought they were better than the alternative choice — if you impute term limits in any fashion, you're tying their hands and you're forcing a decision on them.
'I think that's the opposite of small government. Let people decide. And I highly question any data that says that 70% of South Carolinians or whoever are in favor of term limits on the federal level because we have almost had the same federal delegation forever. One, two, three, four, five, 10 terms or whatever it is. So I question the validity of that data. I don't believe it because if that were the case then we'd have an entire brand new federal delegation already.
If Congress won't impose term limits on itself, the states need to enact them | Opinion
'Term limits, again, just restrict people's freedoms. You've got folks who want to see the presidency be able to have a third term because they love the particular president that much, and I don't agree, but I respect the fact that they think that. But for a presidential term limit, they'd be able to try to do that.'
Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg: 'This bill has seemingly been up in front of this body almost every year, at least for 20 years that I'm aware of. It comes up every year, and what I think people need to recognize is that, in terms of the drawback on term limits, you lose a lot of institutional knowledge, in terms of the body, in terms of how things work, the process....
'One of the things that we need to be concerned about is of course the further ungirdling of this thing that we call a democracy because the people every two years get an opportunity to decide whether that representative or senator is doing a good job or a bad job, whether it's on the federal level or the state level. And I don't think we need to treat the federal level any differently than we treat ourselves.…
'It's important in the long term that we look at how this works on a national level for a small state like South Carolina, which has a small number of … members of Congress, where seniority is important.
'Where would the state of South Carolina be if we did not have single legislators in place such as Congressman (Jim) Clyburn? I think, because of his seniority in the Congress through both Democratic and Republican administrations, he has been successful in terms of guiding billions of dollars for high-speed internet and also for infrastructure back to the state. That didn't just happen. That came about because of the leverage that he had because of his seniority.'
