Next comes from hall from arkansas. Caller good morning. This is term limits just smoke and mirrors. We need to get rid of the lobbyist and big money. Thats the core of the problem. As long as we got lobbyist, suitcases full of money, this is what youre going to get. Host kermit is on the line for independents. Caller hello. Host youre on washington journal this morning. Caller im against term limits. The permanent stance and lobbyist will end up forming the country. You can have term limits but first you have to get corporate money, big money out of election process because theyll just end up running the country. These people come and go and theyll laugh at them and run the country. The lobbyist is staffed. Host Justice Briar recently discussed the term limit case. Its term limit constitution . Lets look at the text. Can arkansas say that its members of congress can serve no more than two terms or four terms or whatever. Well, lets look at the text. The text says that you have to be a member of congress, you have to be 25 years old. You have to be as you said an american citizen and the citizen of the state from which you come. It doesnt say those are the only qualification. So the question is, can arkansas add another one. You havent served two terms already. Jefferson said one thing and madison said another. They said opposite things. Pretty typical. Well, lets look at the consequences, purposes. Lets look at history to see could you add qualifications . All right. Do they have property qualification . Cant you add some qualification such you cant be a lunatic . Clearly not. Its pretty evenly balanced and in my mind if you read the opinion we said they couldnt add. Ultimately i think it came down to the tenth amendment reserves powers of the state. What powers and how strongly should that be interpreted . If these are state officials, member of congress is state official elected by the state well wait, hes a federal official. Should we have federal officials with different qualifications . Well, hes a state official. To what extent, how much weight you put on that tenth amendment and how do you see the interaction. Theres no real answer to a lot of these questions. Host Stephen Breyer talking about term limits for members of congress. Lets take a look at the grade chart for National Journal. The longest serving member of the house of representatives, you can see the break down of which party served the most terms. When considering representatives at least this their second term the distribution in the party is wash. The balance is heavily republicans when considering representatives first electioned in 2010. Again, that chart from National Journal. Lets go do you to burlington, North Carolina, democrat. Caller im a first time caller. Im a long time viewer of this program. I was listening to term limits. It doesnt matter. They should get rid of this constitution. It was written a long time ago. I would say change the districts. Everybody got safe districts. Everybody vote in that state whatever theyre in for that senator or whatever. They cant have safe districts no more. Thank you very much. Host john is on the line for the democrat in virginia. Caller i just want to say that, i think term limits is not the issue. If i have a Chuck Schumer as a senator and you send someone like ted cruz, you know something can be done. They should know who they are sending. Im as an immigrant came here in 1980. I saw senators arguing about issues. At the end of the day they go lunch together and they solve the problem. The problem we have we are electing people who not qualified to be a congressman nor senate. Thats the problem we have unless we make sure that people we elect there are accountability. We send you to work our problem. We not send you arguing about military issues. We are the problem. Its not the congress. We are the divided unless we agree with everything, we cannot solve our problem. Host many have pointed to congressional Approval Ratings is one reason why. Gallup took a look at this and found that congresss job approval started 2014 to 13 . Now that is down to historical average of 13 . Gallup has been tracking congressional job approval since 1974. Things certainly not looking rosy. Next up chuck in california on our line for republicans. Should Congress Members have term limits . Caller yes definitely term limits. Im calling from california. We got term limits in place for state. The state assembly and senate. Its been extremely popular. There have been a couple propositions that have been proposed by politicians who are in our district who want to continue to be in office and went around the term limits and put that on the ballot. Electric has rejected it. Electric will hype term limits. The sense of getting fresh people with fresh ideas who are not necessarily beholden to special interests or just having long term connections. Instead just being fresh from their own district and so on. I think the public like it is at least in california. Host lets take a look at our comments coming in on facebook and twitter. You can reach out to us on f acebook. Com cspan. First on facebook, christopher writes, considering the way 98 of them bought out by special interests, yes, this wasnt supposed to be a career. It was supposed to be bob up the street representing his district for a little while. It wasnt supposed to be a gerrymandered disturb bag representing the people like we have today. Kenny writes, yes know should have term limits with no retirement and the people should be able to vote for Supreme Court judges also. Those comments coming from facebook this morning. Turning now to twitter, joe lewis writes, congress should not only have term limits, their pay should be merit based. Jan writes, we already have term limits, they are called elections. Problem is people dont bother to vote. Our next caller is in london, kentucky sorry, we have lost you. The next call comes from washington, d. C. For the democrats. Caller good morning. I dont believe we should have term limits. We already have term limits because we have elections. What we need to do is vote in people who have the interest of this country. As far as the special interests are concerned we can control that. We need to call them by name. All of this about term limits, we need to find out and we need to keep control of what is going on in congress. This is where the power lies. Not in the person who we send out. People need to do is organize and organize and find them and call by name and put your finger where the problem lies. Host virginia on our line for independents. Should there be term limits for members of congress . Caller i dont think term limits is the only thing we need to have. We need a lot more than that. One of the callers mentioned earlier, having a staff, we can have Congress Candidates if the congressman has a term limits hes done, what is his next job going to be . Is he going to be a lobbyist . There has to be an order that we can take into account all the options so you took you left the congress and became a lobbyist and kind of influencing that way. Term limits are eight years. If we have something similar for congress, maybe six terms or Something Like that. Just that term limits is not going to cut it. The influences that the lobbyist have in washington, it does not matter if youre there for two years, it is not decided by you alone. That needs to be choked first before we can have a clean system that works for the people. Host matt is on the line for republicans in pontiac, michigan. Caller the issue is not term limits. The problem is to abolish the Fourth Branch of the u. S. Government and thats the u. S. Senior executives. You have 12 branches and s. E. S. That was formed in 1979. That over writes all three. If you put term limits on members of congress, how would you pick the speaker of the house or minority leader or majority leader . If the problem is the corruption in the state, gerrymandering somebody previously mentioned. The problem is not term limits. Its the u. S. Senior executive service and thats the Fourth Branch u. S. Government. Unfortunately, it over rides all three branches. Host lets take a look now to a story that is setting the agenda on capitol hill. On page this mornings Washington Post. Clock ticking on gop debt deal. House republicans returned to washington monday still struggling to find a path to raising the treasury departments Borrowing Authority. But the caucus is in unusual agreement that the best option is to put the White Knuckle confrontation of recent fiscal wars behind them. Some Party Leaders were advocating of debt ceiling solution of must pass items to extend the federal governments Borrowing Authority beyond the november midterm election. Certainly optimistic outlook on the recent gridlock. Lets go to mcallister, oklahoma a republican. Caller im calling to say that i believe congress should have term limits because there are people in there that have been there so long and they think they have such power that they can do anything. I think if there was term limits for congress, they know they have only a short time to orc for the people which most of them dont. We have a great senator here in oklahoma that is retiring. One of the best senators ever, tom coburn. He believes there should be term limits for congress. Thank you. Host lets take a look at twitter again. You can reach out cspan wj. Term limits would prevent politicians from amassing huge amounts of personal wealth and that of their corporate crony lobbyist. Peg writes, without historical knowledge the same mistakes will be made over and over like the Government Shutdown. One more from twitter this morning, ken writes, you can talk about term limits all day but only congress can change the law and they wont do it. Niece to talk about it. Bonny is on the line from middletown, new jersey for democrats this morning. Caller good morning. Term limits are a moot issue. Lobbyist are powerless now because now theres the ability through Citizens United if thats not amended, were going to deal with the corporations writing our laws as they have in the states like wisconsin, Koch Brothers and alec and think tanks controlling our media and the information we receive and congress will be as feckless as it is now. The do nothings are being controlled by the beg money. If we dont get money out, then the problem never goes away. Corporations are not people. They are legal entities. We grant them that legal status. They get a whole lot of privileges being corporations that the working guy doesnt get. Host from georgia, steve is on the line for the democrats. Caller most all of my comments have already been stated. Ill state it anyway. Its a moot point like the lady said. Politicians typically would not vote themselves out of existence. Its a tea bag wet dream just like impeaching president obama. Host lets take a look at how it breaks down. The longest serving member, senator robert byrd democrat of west virginia. 51 years in the senate. Theres a pretty good break down by party line if youre watching. Third is senator thurmond, fourth is South Carolina republican 47 years. This shows you can spend quite a bit of time in the house and senate. One of the things that supporters having term limits of congress has pointed out. Our next call comes from belnor, new york richard on the line for independents. What do you think . Caller term limits, no problem with term limits. They should be two terms. You must sit out one term and then the following term you can stay forever. If you sit out that one term, you must take a job with the private sector to keep you in touch with the American People. I can say more but thats enough for now. Host virginia, halle on our line for independents. Caller my comment is essentially, that i believe term limits was set to reduce concentration of power. I think thats one of the problems were seeing right now in the congress due to the fact that while we have some congressmen staying longer to concentrate on power. Because of that, they no longer represent. They dont feel like they have to represent the people anymore. I feel we should have term limits. Host one of our callers earlier made the point, having these term limits in place will be harder elect majority leader or elect a speaker of the house. What do you say to that . Caller like anything else, the people that joins the congress, they have to have im sure they do have some sort of training to let them know how the congress function. When you look at some of the Big Companies out there, one day new ceos, they dont have to have someone in the company for 25 years to be able to run the company. They just rely on the experience that the person has in order to steer the company in the right direction. That probably will be the case for some of the leadership position in the congress. Host all right. Lets take another look at the headlines new york times, chasing gop tries to foil insurgents in primaries. One of the Biggest Challenges for Republican Leaders and the 2014 midterm elections will be how to hang on to the Tea Party Support that has been so instrumental to the partys growth while winning back voters alienated by hard right candidates. That headline from Jeremy Peters and the new york times. Next call is from alabama, sheila is on the line for democrats. Caller i think they should have a term limit. Also i think that, you was talking about their Approval Ratings for the congress and the president. I think that what happened, the president has done everything that he supposed to do but its the congress that hasnt done anything and thats what makes people not like the president or pull his ratings down. Congress, they hadnt done nothing. The people can sit around and listen to the other people, fox news and all the other radio talk show hosts and let a republican get in office and they would not have nothing because all they do is take, take, take. Host how long do you think the term limits should be . Caller maybe like four years. At least four. Host what makes you say that . Caller theyre not doing anything. For a person just to sit around and do something and do nothing just every term, do nothing. I dont think so. Host all right. If you want to join our conversation this morning, number for reps rep republicans 2025853881, for democrats 2025853880 for independents 2025853882. Our topic this morning, should there be term limits for members of congress . In mobile, alabama dan is on the line for democrats. Caller thank you. Whats happening term limits dont matter that much. People in their gerrymandered drex, they are still voting for these people. People in this country need to get a better understanding what these politicians are doing out here. Theyre letting money influence their opinions and everything. All you need to do is get more wiser people in. That will be your term limits. If people was smart enough to understand who they are voting for and quit voting for all of these malicious politicians running for office in this country. Thank you. Host lets go to madison, wisconsin where laura is on the line for independents. Caller good morning. I believe this should be term limits. There should be some discussion about the length of those terms. For instance, two, four, six. Representatives being two senators being four and the president being six. I think there was a problem with reelecting a president. Too much of a president s first four year term is conditioned preparing him for the second term. Just cut out the second term. As for the length of the terms, i dont really know. Thats up for discussion. Lets say eight years for a representative and a senator. As far as management is concerned, maybe youll have to have extended terms for a management group. Thank you very much. Host have a look at the longest serving members in the senate. Lets look at the longest serving members in the house of representatives. Longest tenure is 57 years, that is representative john dingell followed by jamie whiten democrat of mississippi. Followed by carl vinson. Next call comes from new york. We got james calling in. Caller i want to talk about the concepts of having term limits for congress. Do you know its going to take Institutional Knowledge that our congressmen have now thats been in office for centuries. That Institution Needs to be rolled over if they want to continue serving public, they can go through the same process that all state and federal employees do. Once you impose the term limits, theyll still be able to retain that Institutional Knowledge. That is a critical piece not to allow the Institutional Knowledge to go away. Their occupation, we had politicians become career politicians. Thats the only reason theyre in existence. That is not the way it supposed to be. You supposed to serve and sacrifice for your country however years it is. Come back to your occupation and come back to your family and community and learn what you learned on capitol hill and bring that back to your local community. Were losing that. That is more of a problem than the folks losing the Institutional Knowledge on capitol hill. Take the Institutional Knowledge, bring it back to the communities, bring it back to local government and having that knowledge down to the lowest level. Host brushback against proposals such as well for members of congress. American banker had a piece out. They write the framers did not include rotation in office in the constitution. Because they believe the people should be the judges of legislative qualification. The u. S. Supreme court ruled 54 that offset the amendment is to the constitution. Congressional term limits would be unconstitutional. Negotiation of congressional term limits is overwhelming opposed by the american ruling class especially re