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Comment by colejohnson66

5 years ago

Practically no one in Congress would introduce a bill to do so because they (almost certainly) would be afraid it could be used on themselves. That’s my guess anyways.

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colejohnson66

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pc86  5 years ago

No small part of this boils down to the fact that we have career politicians, who have never once held a real job, and that's not what was envisioned when the Constitution was written. If you could only rely on a government salary for 6 months out of the year, or if you could only hold any government job for 5-6 years in a row before being forced back into the private sector, a lot of problems we have with the government deciding it knows better than the Constitution would go away.

I'm not saying we wouldn't have a host of other problems.

  • triceratops  5 years ago

    > if you could only hold any government job for 5-6 years in a row before being forced back into the private sector,

    It would make the revolving door situation even worse. Can you trust a legislator to deal impartially with industry-specific legislation if they have to find a job in that industry 5 years later?

    • pc86  5 years ago

      I think we've jumped the shark with regard to original/founders' intent, but that being said the intent was for "legislator" to never be a full-time job, or even a job at all. It was supposed to be a public service that citizens took on when necessary for the betterment and representation of their communities.

      Now like I said I don't think there's any way to get back to that, but even the notion of a revolving door situation presupposes professional legislators. Term limits in general would help the revolving door problem by limiting the amount of influence any one individual could ever have.

      2 replies →

  • undersuit  5 years ago

    Why wouldn't we have career politicians. It's like making an argument that you shouldn't have career doctors or career lawyers.

    • pc86  5 years ago

      Which of these two sounds better?

      1. Someone who has been in the private sector takes a sabbatical to serve in Congress for a term or two. When they're done, they go back to their old job.

      2. Someone spends their life working on campaigns and for politicians, then gets elected and holds the same Congressional seat for 50 years.

      I think my earlier comments make it clear I think #1 is an ideal and #2 is at best a bastardization of what we should have, but I tried not to editorialize the two options too much.