Despite Rhetoric, GOP Reluctant to Break the Cycle of Unlimited Terms

Term limits for welfare recipients received an enthusiastic thumbs up from Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee last week. Term limits for politicians face a much more uncertain future now that House Republicans have put off for two weeks a vote on the issue originally scheduled for today.

Last week, the Ways and Means Committee approved legislation allowing states to cut off benefits for welfare recipients at any time--and requiring them to terminate aid after five years on the rolls. Even if no private sector jobs were available, states would face no obligation to provide public jobs for recipients willing to work for their aid.

This constitutes a huge leap into the unknown. No one has any idea how many welfare recipients could find work and exactly what would happen to those who don’t. An attention-focusing time limit could break the cycle of dependency and dysfunction that afflicts many poor neighborhoods. Or it could produce more desperation and crime, as argued recently by criminologist John DiIulio, whose views conservatives ordinarily revere.

Uncertainty rules; but when it comes to welfare, House Republicans are willing to roll the dice in the name of reform.

When it comes to their own future, the legislators are much more cautious. The term limits debate now due to begin later this month, in fact, offers a revealing parallel to the Republican efforts to eliminate the federal entitlement to welfare.

In this instance, what would be capped is the entitlement to serve in public office. And, as last week’s unexpected decision to delay the vote suggests, Republicans are much less enthusiastic about that prospect. “What you need to remember,” says Cleta Deatherage Mitchell, director of the Term Limits Legal Institute, “is that this is the only part of the (GOP) contract (with America) that affects these people personally. This is their federal program; this is their entitlement.”

Narrow doctrinal divisions haven’t helped the term limits cause. To the extent Republicans support a constitutional amendment to limit terms, their preference is to cap service at 12 years in the House and 12 in the Senate.

But U.S. Term Limits, the principal lobbying group, adamantly demands limits of six years in the House and 12 in the Senate. To press their point, they have fired TV ads at Republicans who don’t support their version; privately, GOP operatives say, the group is even threatening to mount primary challenges in 1996 to Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and other prominent Republicans who oppose the more stringent limits.

If this seems just a touch intense , term limit advocates also have some legitimate grievances. The House Judiciary bill undermined the entire term limit concept by allowing members to return after simply sitting out two years. Many Republicans are committed to removing that provision on the floor, but deeper divisions remain on whether Congress should set a uniform national term of service or allow states to establish a patchwork of limits.

With little hope of passing the national six-year limit on House service, U.S. Term Limits wants Congress to authorize states to impose such restrictive limits on their own. But after a flurry of initial interest, leading Republicans, such as Gingrich, now oppose that approach. That posture is fueling the suspicion among term limit advocates that the Republicans don’t really want any term limit measure to become law. Obviously the GOP can’t pass a term limit amendment without Democratic votes; but on no other issue has Gingrich tolerated as much dissent from key allies, such as Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas and Republican Conference Chairman John A. Boehner of Ohio.

Gingrich now says he’s committed to whipping up public support for a constitutional amendment. But the real test, Mitchell says, will be whether House Republicans, who clamored for retaliation against Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) on the balanced-budget amendment, threaten to sanction party leaders who stray on term limits. “The play-by-play to watch on the final vote,” Mitchell says, “is how many members of the Republican leadership and committee chairmen vote against this.”

The Republican gyrations on term limits reveal an obvious truth: People are more willing to conduct social experiments down the block than in their own living room. No one can demonstrate term limits will improve the performance of Congress, but they will clearly make life more unpleasant for people dependent on congressional careers. Human nature being what it is, politicians are reluctant to accept the certainty of personal discomfort for the abstract possibility of somehow improving life for the nation as a whole.

On welfare reform, the opposite is occurring. The House bill vastly reduces the social safety net, on the theory that any individual suffering will contribute to the greater good. When it comes to welfare, the House Republicans accept the wisdom of Robespierre: To make an omelet, you’ve got to break a few eggs. When it comes to term limits, many of the GOP lawmakers are worried about dripping egg yolk on their loafers.

What’s worse, the polarizing argument over welfare is obscuring the potential for a broad social consensus. In a Los Angeles Times survey last spring, 91% of Americans supported the idea of requiring welfare recipients to work after two years on the rolls but providing them with public service jobs if no private sector work is available.

That notion of reciprocal responsibility was the centerpiece of the welfare reform legislation President Clinton introduced last year and then unwisely abandoned to push health care.

After much hesitation the past few months, Clinton is beginning to find his voice again in the welfare debate. In a meeting with reporters last week, Clinton sharply opposed eliminating benefits for recipients who are willing to work but cannot find employment. And he pointedly reminded the House Republicans that in practice, “it is very difficult” to break the culture of dependency without investing in education, training and day care--all given no new funding in the GOP bill.

Under any circumstances, it won’t be easy to move huge numbers of people from the welfare caseload into the work force. Many recipients lack basic skills. Creating public sector jobs is expensive and bureaucratically cumbersome. And subsidizing private companies to hire welfare recipients--an idea the President is now enthusiastically touting--could have the perverse effect of making it less attractive to hire low-skilled workers who have never fallen into the welfare system.

Sometimes the best principle for public policy is humility. Programs to move welfare recipients to work or to deter teen-age pregnancy have had marginal success, at best. These are stubborn problems. They cannot be willed away or solved simply by letting a thousand flowers bloom in the states. Welfare reform requires patient, determined efforts to encourage productive behavior (by providing training, and jobs themselves if necessary) even while sanctioning self-destructive and antisocial acts (such as long-term dependence without work or repeated childbearing out of wedlock.)

In assessing welfare reform, the members of Congress might do well to consider their own emotions about term limits. The downside risk of term limits isn’t that high. Denied further service from Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), a 30-year House member, or Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), now in his 11th term, the nation would soldier on. But the prospect of change so vast terrifies politicians.

The downside risk of precipitously withdrawing support for poor families without building ladders to independence is incalculably greater. But on this table, the House Republicans are willing to shoot the moon. Their moral equation is exactly backward. When it comes to upending lives distant and vulnerable, Congress should be excruciatingly conservative. If they want to take risks, let them start by upending their own lives with term limits.

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22 States With Term Limits

Some term limit advocates are angry because the constitutional amendment passed by the House Judiciary Committee would preempt state laws limiting term. The amendment would allow House members to serve 12 years, but most states that have approved term limits have set stricter limits on service.

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No limits Alabama Connecticut Delaware Georgia Hawaii Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maryland Minnesota Mississippi New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina Pennsylvania Rhode Island Tennessee Texas South Carolina Vermont Virginia West Virginia Wisconsin *

6-year House limits Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Idaho Maine Michigan Montana Nebraska Nevada Oklahoma Oregon Washington Wyoming *

8-year House limits 0 12-year House limits Florida Massachusetts Missouri North Dakota Ohio South Dakota Utah Source: U.S. Term Limits, a lobbying group