We the people ask that our voices be heard, and legislation be passed to enact term limits on those serving in Congress. What is meant is that those in the House and in the Senate must have a restriction on the number of terms they will be allowed to serve (for this petition, it is proposed 2 terms to match that of the presidency restrictions) before being unseated and no longer able to run as an incumbent. Not only will this benefit the country on a financial level – which has been the main topic of concern of term limits since the 90’s (Lopez 2001) – but it will also benefit in the strengthening of democracy. The lack of term limits is creating a system of unaccountability from those currently serving in Congress; in turn they have become opportunistic and focused on their own agendas rather than representing the people.“The quality of representative governments will depend on the degree of alignment between the incentives of voters, individual politicians, and their partiers, and on the existing mechanisms to select agents and minimize opportunist behaviors when misalignment doesn’t exist” (Klasnja 2017). By enacting term limits, those who have the honor to serve may be more concerned with leaving behind a great legacy of impactful legislation rather than spending decades defacing the constitution for personal gain. As for bettering of democracy, it is the opinion of the people that enacting term limits would require more of voters, rendering the current level of complacency moot and no longer providing a repetitive name for people to carelessly reelect.

Klasnja, M., Titiunik, R. (2017). The incumbency curse: weak parties, term limits and unfulfilled accountability. American Political Science Review. 111, 1, 129-148.

Lopez, E.J. (2001). Term limits: causes and consequences. Kluwer Academic Publishers. (Department of Economics, University of North Texas). 114: 1-56, 2003