How Many Terms Can House of Representatives Serve
While Congress is made up of both the U.S. Firm of Representatives and the Senate, members of each of these 2 bodies are elected to serve for dissimilar amounts of time. Nosotros're taking a look at how term lengths differ for officials elected to each office of Congress and delve into why the founders set it up that way. And we'll delve into the upshot of term limits, which are laws that would limit how many times each fellow member of Congress can run for reelection.
Term Lengths: Senate vs. House of Representatives
While nosotros vote for who should hold the office of president every iv years, congressional elections piece of work a little differently. Members of the House of Representatives only serve two-year terms, unless they are reelected. These reelections happen every even-numbered year.
Senators, however, become to serve for six years earlier they accept to run for reelection again. Their reelections are staggered and so that you'll never encounter every single senator up for reelection at the aforementioned fourth dimension. Instead, every even year, only nigh i-3rd of the Senate comes upwardly for reelection later they've served their full six-year term.
How many terms can a member of Congress serve if they keep getting reelected? Currently, as many as they want. Different presidents, members of Congress are under no obligation to retire after serving for a certain number of years.
And so, why practice members of the House and Senate accept different term lengths? For answers, let'due south rewind. Back when the founders were figuring out how the government of the U.S. should be structured, they divided Congress into two halves then that each could serve a specific set of needs.
The House of Representatives is composed of elected officials from each state. The larger the population of the state, the more representatives they get to elect. This was supposed to ensure that the overall population of the U.Due south. was fairly represented, no affair where they lived. Ane of the reasons that a House official's term is so short is to keep them on their toes, so to speak. By more or less constantly being up for reelection, a House fellow member's career depends on staying upwards-to-date with the preferences of their constituents.
Senate: Term Lengths and Limits
The Senate, on the other mitt, is equanimous of two representatives from each state who each serve for a term of half-dozen years at a time. While the House of Representatives was designed to stay on summit of the "pulse of the people," the Senate was intended to be a piddling more discrete.
Equally James Madison put it, "If it not be a firm body, the other branch being more numerous, and coming immediately from the people, volition overwhelm it." In other words, the Senate is in that location to make sure that the government isn't entirely dependent on the e'er-changing whims and passions of the people.
In social club to keep the Senate from feeling completely gratuitous to practise their own thing, however, the founders decided on the idea of having 1/iii revolving elections every 2 years. That way, the Senate would always exist stable, yet somewhat upwards for change.
What Are Term Limits?
If there is a two-term limit on the office of president, why isn't there i for members of Congress? Well, go along in listen that the presidential term limit didn't always exist. In fact, there were no term limits for federal officials at all for over the get-go 150 years of U.S. history.
While the two-year term limit was sort of an unofficial presidential tradition, plenty of presidents ran for a tertiary term, but only one managed to go reelected. In fact, FDR was elected president 4 times — in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. It wasn't until February of 1951 that the 22nd Amendment was formally ratified to establish the two-term presidential limit as U.Due south. law.
Ironically, there actually were some Congressional term limits at ane time, but they were somewhen thrown out. In 1995, 23 different states had passed laws that limited how many terms their elected officials could serve in Congress. A pol from Arkansas, all the same, decided that he wanted the police thrown out in his state. Long story short, the issue went all the fashion to the U.South. Supreme Court, where it was ultimately decided that states could not impose Congressional term limits on their representatives.
Should Congress Have Term Limits?
One of the principal arguments fabricated by the Supreme Court when they decided to toss state-imposed term limits was that that sort of thing should exist done through a Constitutional amendment. As such, whether or not there should exist such an amendment has become a thing of heated argue.
Those who support congressional term limits fence that doing then would keep anyone from becoming a "career politician." The idea here is that this would forcefulness members of Congress to concentrate more on their constituents' best interests rather than those of special interests groups or campaign donors. Term-limit supporters also argue that limiting the terms of those in Congress is more in-line with the original intent of the founders and the majority will of the people.
Those who oppose term limits debate that since members of Congress can but go along to serve if re-elected, information technology should exist up to voters when to remove them. Some claim that term limits would work confronting voters, past preventing them from keeping a representative they loved around long-term. Additionally, some argue that being a fellow member of Congress in and of itself is like whatever other career path and that representatives only go better with experience.
There is currently a articulation resolution nether consideration that would make congressional term limits a reality. Cheque out U.S. Term Limits for more than information and to learn how you can contact your representatives to vocalization your stance.
Source: https://www.reference.com/world-view/length-term-senate-house-representatives-8c9b5deb7e2eefb2
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