2023-11-07 22:07:30
Before the ousting of speaker Kevin McCarthy, the House Judiciary Committee defeated House Joint Resolution 11, our US term limits amendment by a vote of 19 to 17. Stay tuned to see who the nasty 19 are. I’m Holly Robichaud, and this is Breaking News on Term limits. Public support for Congressional term limits has reached a record high. Pew Research is out with a new poll that shows 87%. That’s right, 87% of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, favor congressional term limits. At the same time, the poll showed that trust in the federal government was at a record low with only 16% of Americans trusting it. House Joint Resolution 11, sponsored by South Carolina representative Ralph Norman with 103 co-sponsors across party lines was defeated in the House Judiciary Committee, as I mentioned at the top of the show. Could it be revived? Perhaps. In the current chaos in Washington, anything is possible.
Kevin McCarthy promised us a vote on term limits when he was first elected speaker. Ironically in the vote against him, his tepid support and failure to do more on this issue was mentioned. With McCarthy voted out as speaker, a new race for speaker has begun. We are urging House members to ask each candidate where they stand on congressional term limits and will they vote to support congressional term limits? We want a clean up and down vote on term limits and will they bring it to the floor? Let’s find out. As I said at the top of the show, the House Judiciary Committee defeated House Joint Resolution 11, our US term limits amendment by a vote of 19 to 17. It was real close. The nasty 19 career politicians who voted against it were Representative Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Zoe Lofgren, Ted Lieu, Lou Correa, Darrell Issa, Thomas McClintock, Joseph Neguse, Hank Johnson, Glenn Ivey, Jerry Nadler, Deborah Ross, Mary Scanlon, Steve Cohen, Veronica Escobar, Sheila Jackson Lee, Becca Balint, Scott Fitzgerald and Harriet Hageman.
That’s right. They voted against this despite polling from Pew Research showing that 87% of Americans across party lines support congressional term limits. With the defeat of House Joint Resolution 11, we are redoubling our efforts in the states to pass resolutions for congressional term limits. As the number of states increases, we will see Congress move in on term limits to preempt the states. It happened with the 22nd Amendment that limited the president to two terms in office. Ironically, when it was passed, it excluded the incumbent President Harry S. Truman from two terms. Yet Truman, a firm believer in term limits only served two terms, most of FDRs fourth term and his own second term, abiding by the 22nd Amendment. Wanna update you on New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez. Despite the massive federal indictments against him and his wife, and calls for him to resign, “Gold Bar” Bob double down that he will not resign and he will seek re-election. And some predict with the power of incumbency behind him, he might just win. See why we need term limits. He’s gotta be the poster child for it.
Now it’s time for the corrupt politician of the week. This week, Warren, Michigan mayor, Jim Fouts, makes our list. Fouts is a staunch opponent of term limits. He fought in federal court to try to get on the mayoral ballot even though he was term limited under Michigan law. But wait, that’s not all. An audit from the city council shows that Fouts illegally spent nearly half a million dollars of city money on gift cards, TVs and other items. No wonder why he didn’t wanna leave office. We have exciting news out of Tennessee. Tennessee State Senator Richard Biggs has signed on as our senate sponsor for House Joint Resolution 5. This resolution would have Tennessee join the other states in calling for a convention for proposing congressional term limits amendment to US Constitution.
The measure passed the State House earlier this year with representative Chris Todd as the sponsor. In the Senate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz continues to be a tireless advocate for term limits as he has been since he was first elected. He has sponsored in this session of Congress, Senate Joint Resolution 2, the Senate Companion to House Joint Resolution 11. This legislation has 18 co-sponsors in the Senate. We know it faces an uphill battle as it is opposed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. If there’s one thing that seems to unite long-term career politicians like Schumer and Mitch McConnell, its opposition to congressional term limits, despite the overwhelming support of the people for congressional term limits.
Our Western field director, Constantin Querard, was featured on Fox 31 in Denver discussing the renewed interest in term limits. Check it out.
But I asked the spokesperson here exactly why this is such a big push.
There is a concern that they’re perhaps not connected to how life is now for America in general. It’s also a symptom that they’ve simply been there for too long. You’ve been there for 20, 30, 40 years and that’s just not healthy for the institution. Your job should be to go fix things and come home. Most of them look at their job as keeping their job and staying there forever. And that’s a terrible motivation for getting good things done.
Now, historically, term limits are widely supported in Colorado. Colorado passed term limits on its own legislature and members of Congress. We were one of the first states to do it in the early ’90s. Now, to do this nationally, it takes two thirds of the states to pass it as an amendment. So 34 states would have to be on board.
If representatives and senators don’t get it, candidates do. In Ohio, Bernie Moreno, candidate for the US Senate, is an avowed champion of term limits. He’s in fact even a state chair for us. He’s the only candidate on board who has signed the US term limits pledge. Ironically, he’s seeking to unseat Sherrod Brown, who was for term limits when he was in the House, but now as a senator, he opposes it. He was for it before he was against it. We’ve had a lot of new pledge signers this week, especially in Louisiana. Willis Trosclair, Braville LeBlanc, Michael Sigur and Shane Mack have all signed our pledge. In Michigan, Christine Charette and in Oklahoma, Chris Ware and Nicole Powell in Rhode Island have all signed our pledge. Thank you for doing so. We appreciate your support. We’re seeing great progress in North Dakota. Retire Congress North Dakota is actively in the field gathering signatures to get a state constitutional amendment on the 2024 ballot that would prohibit anyone 80 or older from being elected to Congress from North Dakota.
The renewed coverage of aging members of Congress is giving this movement a lot of momentum. To find out more about what’s happening in North Dakota, go to retirecongressnorthdakota.com. In other states such as Nevada, there are three Senate candidates running for the Republican nomination who’ve signed our pledge. They are Stephanie Phillips, Tom Grady and Jim Marchant. In Virginia Senate race, Jonathan Emord, Gwen Hickman, Edward Garcia, Scott Parkinson, and Hung Cao have all signed the US Term Limits pledge. Please consider these candidates when you vote. In the states, we scored several victories in Alabama where two pledge signers for special elections for the state legislature advanced to the October runoffs, and Alabama State House District 16 pledge signer Brad Cox is in the runoff with a non-pledge signer. And Alabama’s House District 55 pledge signer Sylvia Swayne is in the runoff with another non-pledge signer. The runoffs are both October 24th. Make sure to get out and support our term limits candidates.
While House Joint Resolution 11 was defeated, we do have the support of the people, so we need you to get involved today to give us a helping hand as we try to recruit more congressional members to support our resolutions and to sign our pledges. So will you help us out by going to termlimits.com today and getting involved? And be sure to share this program with your friends and family every week. This is Holly Robichaud with Breaking News on Term Limits. We’ll see you next week.
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