US Term Limits is proud to announce that State Senator Erin Tobin is our new South Dakota State Chair. Erin is a fifth-generation South Dakotan businesswoman and medical professional who will be spearheading our efforts in the Mount Rushmore State. Hi, I’m Holly Robichaud and this is Breaking News on Term Limits. In our last episode, I talked about how we have a new State Chair in Texas, Brandon Herrera. We’re pleased to have him on board. He recently wrote an op-ed that was featured in the Beaumont Enterprise. One of the most compelling points he wrote was, Term Limits has become the most popular bipartisan issue in the country. A recent Pew Research poll showed that 87% of Americans regardless of political affiliation support congressional Term Limits. Yet despite this overwhelming support, Congress refuses to act on congressional Term Limits. Yet last year, Congressman Ralph Norman’s resolution that would have set Term Limits for the House of Representatives at three terms and the Senate at two terms was defeated by a committee vote of 19 to 17, despite having more than 100 co-sponsors.
Simply put, Term Limits would not only transfer our do-nothing Congress into an orderly legislative body that would represent the will of the people because it constitutes the day-to-day American citizens. He also was interviewed on KXYL radio in Brownwood, Texas on why congressional Term Limits is so popular. Brandon’s doing a great job already for us.
Find the curtain in politics is you you find out a lot of our country is run by 25-year-old interns and that’s really the scary truth of it.
All right, so let’s talk about this. Brandon Herrera is the group called US Term Limits and obviously you want you want Term Limits across the board just for Congress. What’s the focus here?
The main the main focus right now is getting Term Limits instituted for Congress. So we have them for the the presidency which is just four-year terms so you’re you’re limited to two four-year terms but meanwhile in the senate you know something that has a great deal of control of this country you’re allowed to have as many six-year terms as possible and that’s just kind of extreme considering the disappointment that the US people have in Congress right now the approval rating is through the floor a lot of people are asking for Term Limits but with an approval rating that low in the free market you would have been fired ages ago but for whatever reason incumbents have a massive advantage almost a certainty of re-election and that’s the system that’s completely broken.
It’s something like 98% I believe right is if you’re an incumbent you had 98% re-election rate and you go oh well that’s ’cause they’re doing such a good job really because you’ve got a 36% approval rating how is that possible how… Can you explain in detail maybe Brandon how the deck is stacked if you’re an incumbent?
Sure absolutely incumbents have access naturally to on both sides this is a Republican and Democrat issue, they have they have access to the party money they have they have the name recognition of already having run at least one election and having won having been in the news cycles. They just have a natural deck that is stacked in their favor regardless of the job that they’ve done. I mean you really have to mess it up or have ticked off some very powerful people if you’re gonna run as an incumbent and not win.
Yeah and I think even like mailers and stuff like that you can the taxpayers can pay for some of that stuff too there’s there’s a whole mechanism behind keeping you in office whether you’re good or bad I mean look how long it took for Menendez to leave.
Yeah I mean it makes sense the party wants to keep… If it’s a red seat they wanna keep it red if the blue seat they wanna keep it blue and they have a natural incentive as a party even if they don’t like you that much to keep that seat for their team.
And of course the biggest one of all and no one knows more about this than Ohioans and that would be gerrymandering.
Yeah absolutely but I mean it’s not something that can’t be overcome. I mean even Ohio I believe has its own Term Limits instituted for its state representatives isn’t that right?
Yeah and I mean we’re talking about getting a citizens coalition together that’s gonna redraw the maps to make them fair you’re gonna have a number of Republicans and equal number of Republicans Democrats and Independents. And of course the political class is crying about how awful this is gonna be for democracy, but how awful is it right now?
Sure and I mean there’s a there’s an argument to be made there but I don’t think it’s anything close to the argument you know as far as the political system itself that allows money to play such a heavy part in it is that really democracy at the end of the day? You know when when a vote can be bought and paid for is that you know is that really the concern?
Yeah I mean if you look at this from just the free market aspect of is okay, I hire you do a job you make all these grand promises and then you fail miserably about it. And then you tell me in six years or four years how you’re the only one qualified to solve these problems again and can I get rid of you now? You’ve kind of stacked the deck to prevent me from doing that and let’s not forget when you look at the greatest of all documents in this nation it starts with the capital letters of we the people. And I think there’s a reason why they capitalize those three first three words.
Yeah absolutely the entire point of our system of government was supposed to be controlled by the people. And when they stack the decks so desperately in their own favor that’s where things we sometimes we need to step up and rearrange some things I mean it’s just like we did when we decided that we wanted Term Limits for president. I mean we were having FDR roll into a fourth term and we just decided together as a nation that that was something that we didn’t wanna see moving forward. So we took action where congress didn’t the states got together and then that’s when congress actually stepped up and instituted Term Limits for presidency and that’s what I’d love to see happening I really like this.
Because there was a huge movement in the states to do that back back when we set Term Limits after FDR just kept running the table. And democrats fought against that and eventually like okay well we read the writing on the wall we’ve got to now turn around and actually do some legislation to at least craft it’s it’s still favorable for us. And they do that all the time the men and they won’t act on anything and we did that with marijuana here in Ohio the people wanted it they said no no no no no then finally it’s like okay well we’ll do our known initiative. And as soon as that started rolling they got together the legislature said okay we’ll come up with our own thing which totally screwed it up but that’s that’s what you wind up getting, to protect themselves.
That is the number one thing you can learn about politics is that if you want a politician to do something you have to force their hands. Exactly what happened with the Term Limits like you mentioned for presidency, that’s probably what we’re gonna end up having to do again now there are a lot of representatives and senators in congress right now who have signed the US Term Limits pledge. But in reality to get things on the table and to get things moving they’re probably going to have to have to have the threat of the states doing it first because if the states do it. Then they don’t have any control over it so they wanna they wanna keep that control they wanna keep their hand on the polls make sure that they can put in their own little policies their own little parachutes and things which to me is fine as long as we end up with with Term Limits that is a generational win for Americans.
Support for Term Limits at all levels of government is growing and initiatives for Term Limits are rising. In Skokie Illinois a Term Limits proposal will be on the November 5th ballot. It would limit the mayor trustee and clerk to no more than three terms in office. In Iberville Paris Louisiana the city council has put Term Limits proposal on the ballot that would limit city council members to no more than three terms. It’s spreading across America, momentum for congressional Term Limits continues to build nationally. 66 candidates for the state legislature have signed the US Term Limits pledge in the past two weeks. A record number of candidates who support this pressing issue are winning elections. Which is no surprise when polls demonstrate time and time again that Americans overwhelmingly support Term Limits and a very special thank you goes to our pledge team who are collecting this these on a daily basis. Now it’s time for the corrupt politician of the episode it’s Virginia US representative Rob Whitman prior to being elected to congress in 2008 represented Whitman served in the Virginia house of delegates. In 2021 represented Whitman violated the stop trading congressional knowledge act of 2012.
This is a federal conflict of interest in transparency law. Representative Whitman failed to disclose $60,000 of stock trades in Johnson and Johnson royal gold inc and TJX companies. He must have just forgotten huh congressional Term Limits can become a reality we’ve got the momentum we’ve got the support of the people but we can’t do it without your help we need everybody pitching in, please go to termlimits.org and get involved today. And be sure to share this program with your family and friends this is Holly Robichaud for US Term Limits breaking news I’ll see you soon.