Tag: US Senate

Vote Term Limits

Do you support Congressional term limits? Do you practice what you preach?

John Cornyn is running for US Senate for his fifth six-year term, thirty years. He is 74 years old and will be 80+ at the end of a fifth term. If you truly believe in Congressional term limits, you cannot vote for John Cornyn.

political funnelPolitics is like an upside down funnel: there are lots of positions at the bottom but as you climb higher, there are fewer and fewer. For those who climb the political “ladder” thinking one position prepares you for another, politicians who don’t step aside block out other qualified individuals. With the amount of money raised by incumbents and the cost to campaign, one has to be a multi-millionaire (or have very wealthy friends) to slide into a higher position. Was our Republic created so only the wealthy can serve in elected office? I think not.

Not voting your belief in Congressional term limits does two things: it forces out some very talented people with new, fresh ideas and it creates an environment where only the wealthy, or those with massive war chests, can serve in office.

Term limits, and voting accordingly if you believe in them, keeps our Congress a citizen congress, one where people with other career experiences come to serve, using their experience to make America great again, and then head back to real life.

Americans Overwhelming Support Term Limits

According to TermLimits.com, in 2025 over 83% of Americans favored term limits for members of Congress. For Republicans or Republican-leaning respondents, that percentage was 85%. Even for Democrats, the percentage was huge: 79%.

clocksIn 2025, US Senator Dave McCormick (R-PA) introduced a joint resolution limiting US Senators to two six-year terms and limiting US House members to six two-year terms: a maximum of 12 years in both offices. The President is term limited. Why not Congress?

Did you know?

More than one-third of Senators in the 118th Congress were 70 or older. The 119th Congress is the third oldest in history. The average Senator is nearly 64 years old, which is 11 years older than the average Senator in 1981. Similarly, the House Members are nearly nine years older on average than they were in 1981. As of this year, Members of the House and Senate have an average of 8.6 and 11.2 years of prior service in their respective chambers. This represents a steady increase from the early 20th century when that number fell below six years for both the House and Senate.

~ McCormick Press Release, April 10, 2025

Early voting for the runoffs starts May 18. Think about this when you go to vote. Should any member of Congress serve 30 years? If you agree with me that’s far too long in one position, then it’s time to retire John Cornyn and elect Ken Paxton.

Who’s To Blame?

I spend a lot of time on X (formerly Twitter). I have always liked the short format with links to deeper dives. I liked that even when Twitter was limited to 140 characters, although sharing info in 140 characters was often very difficult.

When it changed to 280, we had the opportunity to be truly verbose in our tweets. Now, with a paid account, pretty much the sky is the limit making some tweets downright book chapters. Most people split them up into smaller tweets. In the X world, those multi-tweet posts are called “threads”.

When you spend a lot of time there, you’ll find people blaming all levels of government and elected officials for the problem “du jour”.

Then, the other day I got a panicked phone call from a friend working on a non-profit issue. She panicked because some info was due and now the government was closed. Once I explained that she was working with state government and they weren’t closed, she breathed a sign of relief.

All that got me thinking about the importance of understanding who does what in the government sphere. And as we know from our tax bills, we sure do have a lot of layers of government.

The Federal government is closed. That’s it. State, county, city, boards of education, local and state courts are not. And Federal courts usually stay open for a while during a shutdown. Need to do something “governmental”? Search online to find out what level of government handles that task.

Looking for blame for the Federal shutdown? All bloviating aside, it’s important to know what has to happen to keep the Federal government operating. It needs a budget and authorization to spend that money.

Spending bills originate in the House of Representatives according to the US Constitution (Article 1, Section 7). Once an identical bill is passed by the House and Senate, the President must sign it for it to become law. That includes spending bills.

The US House passed a CR, a “Continuing Resolution” which will enable the Federal government to continue to operate. Sometimes new or modified spending is included in a CR. Not this time. The US House passed a “clean” CR to have the government continue operating with current levels of funding in place.

The US Senate needs 60 votes to end discussion on a bill and has yet to get the 60 votes needed to stop discussing and move to vote on the House-passed CR.

The President can’t do anything until he is presented with an identical bill passed by both Houses of Congress.

So where does the blame lie? Squarely with the US Senate. Without 60 votes to stop debate and formally vote on the CR passed by the House, the Federal government will remain closed. The US House has done its job. The President doesn’t have a bill to sign or veto. An open or closed Federal government lies in the hands of the US Senate.

Because there aren’t 60 Republicans in the Senate, without a few Democrat votes, it’ll remain closed. Majority leader Chuck Schumer needs to convince a few Dems to vote to keep the Federal government open, no matter what he says on TV or in online interviews. The ball is in his court. Chuck Schumer needs to find the votes to open the Federal government. If he can’t, he and he alone will be responsible for a failure of leadership and the impacts on the American people of a closed Federal government.