Braun supports amendment to set Congressional term limits

Braun has joined a group of all Republican Senators including fellow Hoosier Todd Young, Ted Cruz of Texas, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida to reintroduce the amendment.

U.S. Senators would be limited to two six-year terms and members of the House of Representatives to three two year terms.

“If there is one change that would immediately make Washington work more for Americans and less for the swamp, it’s term limits. I’m proud to have signed a term limit pledge for myself and to support this constitutional amendment to break up the farm system of politics and take on the dysfunction in D.C.,” Braun said.

Cruz, Toomey and Rubio are both serving their second terms in the Senate. Toomey has announced he won’t seek a third term in office at the expiration of his second term in 2022.

The proposed amendment, if adopted before the next Congressional elections in 2022, would bar numerous representatives from running, including several members of Indiana delegation.

With a six-year cap on House seats, northeast Indiana Rep. Jim Banks would be bounced from office, as he’s now in his third term.

Other Hoosiers who would be blocked from seeking office again would include Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-2nd, who has been in since 2011; Rep. Andre Carson, D-7th, in Congress since 2008; Rep. Larry Bucschon, R-8th, in office since 2011; and Trey Hollingsworth, R-9th, who came into office with Banks in 2017. In total, five of Indiana’s nine House members would be barred from running again.

Neither Braun nor Young would be affected on Indiana’s Senate side, as both are in their first term. Young is up for re-election in 2022 and Braun will be on the ballot for a second term in 2024.

There are currently 287 members of the House who entered office in January 2017 or prior, meaning 66% of all representatives would be barred from re-election if the amendment went into effect by 2022.

There are 157 House members with 10 years or more in the House, 57 with more than 20 years and 13 members with more than 30 years in office. Of those with 30 years or more, nine are Democrats and four are Republicans, and eight of those 13 hold leadership positions of some kind.

In the Senate, 50 of the 100 Senators would be barred from running again 2022 or later.

There are currently 37 Senators with more than 12 years in office currently serving, 16 with more than 20 years in office and just four with more than 30 years in office. Of the 16 with 20 years or more, 10 are Democrats and six are Republicans, although three of those six GOP members are over 30 years.

The amendment would appear to face little chance of passage in the current political climate, especially since amendments require overwhelming support in Congress and among states in order to be ratified.

Constitutional amendments must be passed by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate before being put to the states, where 38 of the 50 states must ratify it before it’s added to the Constitution.

Democrats currently control both chambers of Congress, with a narrow majority in the House and a 50-50 split in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties. Republicans do hold an edge in state legislatures around the country, but not at a three-fourths majority.

Those factors would mean the amendment would need a level of bipartisanship that’s been rare to find in Congress or statehouses in recent years.

The last amendment to be ratified, the 27th, was done in 1992 and states that changes in Congressional pay don’t take effect until the state of the next term of office for those representatives. That amendment had been proposed as one of the original changes to the Constitution, but was not ratified until nearly 203 years later.

Prior to that, the nation had not had a new constitutional amendment since 1971 when the 26th amendment was ratified, setting the national voting age at 18 following the Vietnam War.