Research Paper on:
For and Against Federal Term Limits

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
average rate for incumbent congressmen over the last decade has been almost 98 percent. Why? Because it is almost impossible for a challenger to come anywhere near matching  an incumbents campaign war chest!" (Rosen, 1994, p. 18) Term limits on the U.S. federal level at the present time are only imposed upon the office of the President,  and not on the terms of any other legislators (Muskal, 2009). According to the 1994 Supreme Court decision in the case of U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, the growing  practice of states imposing term limits on prospective congressional officials is unconstitutional because they "expand the list of qualifications" that go beyond age, American citizenship, and state residency (Rosen, 1994,  p. 18). Nevertheless, in November 2009 a trio of Republican U.S. Senators - Jim DeMint (SC), Tom Coburn (OK), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) - is sponsoring a proposed  "Term Limits for All" amendment that would limit senators to two terms and representatives to three terms in office (Muskal, 2009). This is particularly ironic given that Sen. Bailey  Hutchison is already in her third term. The question therefore arises: Why have term limits been proposed? In the minds of many American voters, lack of term limits encourages  corruptibility and a lust for power. When introducing his amendment proposal on federal term limits, Sen. DeMint observed, "Americans know real change in Washington will never happen until we  end the era of permanent politicians. As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to  buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork - in short, amassing their own power" (Muskal, 2009).