Senate Democrats’ Filibuster Kills Term Limits Amendment

Popular with the public, a proposed constitutional amendment to place term limits on members of Congress died Tuesday in a Senate Democratic filibuster. Republicans sought political advantage in the aftermath.

On a 58-42 vote, two short of the 60 needed, lawmakers refused to stop debate on the measure. A short time later, Majority Leader Bob Dole pulled it from the floor.

“We’ll bring it up again next year if need be,” Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) said shortly before the vote. Elected to the Senate in 1994, Thompson led the fight for the measure, which enjoys support in the 70% range in polls.

All 53 Republicans and five Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, voted to curtail debate. All the votes against were cast by Democrats.

Term-limit advocates outside Congress had long wanted a vote.

Said Paul Jacob, head of U.S. Term Limits: “I think those people who voted no . . . are going to find that if they’re up for election this year, this was not a very good vote for them.”

The measure would have limited senators to two six-year terms and House members to six two-year terms, effective on the amendment’s ratification by the required three-fourths of state legislatures.

The Constitution does not limit the length of congressional service. Lawmakers generally accumulate power through seniority, gradually rising to chairmanships of subcommittees and committees. Those posts confer enormous power over federal money and programs.

The term-limit proposal was part of the House Republicans’ “contract with America.” Even so, the GOP-controlled House rejected it last year on a 227-204 vote, well shy of the two-thirds needed.

That made the Senate proceedings largely symbolic, although some GOP strategists hope that Dole, the party’s presidential nominee-in-waiting, as well as other Republican candidates will receive credit from limits-minded voters this fall for having brought the measure to the floor.

Democrats labored to prevent that.

“After 35 years in Congress, Sen. Dole has committed the ultimate flip-flop,” Democratic National Chairman Don Fowler said in a written statement. “This is an extremely late, campaign-year conversion to the term-limits position.”