Where Term Limits Count

erm limits are the political panacea of the 1990s. Cures all that ails ya. One thin dime; it won't make ya and it won't break ya. Lydia Pinkham's Elixir for the Body Politic.

Well, with a beginning like that I reveal myself as a typical inside-the-Beltway elitist who dismisses the wishes of the public. But before you turn the page, let it be known that this article will actually argue for term limits, though not the kind you've been reading about for years.

Term limits are very popular, both for state legislatures and Congress. Since 1990, 21 states have imposed them on their own legislatures while 23 approved them for Congress before the Supreme Court stepped in and said states couldn't impose such restrictions on federal offices. Those federal limits would have held senators to 12 years, while representatives would have been restricted to 12 years by three states, eight years by four states and a stingy six years by 16 states.

Along the way, House Speaker Thomas Foley lost his seat in large measure because he so visibly opposed the Washington state referendum that approved term limits. He then had the temerity to flaunt his opposition by supporting the court appeal that overturned the results.

So where do we stand now? In the November elections, 14 states voted on requiring a notation on the next ballot showing whether an incumbent Congress member had voted for or against a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on federal legislators. Nine of those states voted yes. Washington state was among the five that voted no, suggesting folks there may be having second thoughts.

Term limits are not a bad idea. The bad idea is the way term limits have been formulated. The idea being pushed is to limit the number of years a legislator may serve. Why? Because, say the sponsors, career politicians lose touch with the public. I fail to see any evidence of that. In 20 years of working on Capitol Hill, I never saw any difference between senior or junior Congress members in responsiveness to the public will. As a matter of fact, senior members didn't flounder as much as junior members when it came to discerning what that will was and, more importantly, discerning whether it was a passing fad or a true conviction.

Furthermore, the whole idea behind elections is that the public can toss out legislators who lose touch. Term limit supporters, however, argue that the powers of incumbency allow legislators to stay in office forever.

That's not what the election results show. Most years most legislators running for re-election do, indeed, win with regularity. But every so often, as in 1992, there is a sea change. The fact that there isn't a sea change every two years doesn't show that the system doesn't work, it simply shows that the public doesn't want a sea change every two years (which shows the public ain't so dumb). Meanwhile, about once a generation we have a sea change, demonstrating that the system does work.

The Ties That Bind

But all this hassling over term limits misses one very major problem-that legislators, whether they are in for six years or 60, spend their time on a few committees where they tend to align with groups whose interests they look after diligently. Take the House. There, most members serve on two committees. They choose them their freshman year. Naturally, they pick committees that provide the most help back home. If you're from farm country, naturally you seek the Agriculture Committee. If you've got a big Army base or a major defense contractor in your district, you go for the National Security Committee. And so on.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. The late Defense Secretary Les Aspin served 24 years in the House. As a freshman from a heavily unionized district, his logical first choice was the Labor Committee. He did not seek that committee, however. Was he dumb? No, but he knew that his vote on that committee would not be his own. He would always be looking over his shoulder and nodding to the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers and the Machinists unions. Instead, Aspin chose what was then called the House Armed Services Committee. Why? In part, because he was interested in defense issues. But, more importantly, because he had no military bases or major defense contractors in his district. There were generally only 14 military personnel assigned to his district-all recruiters. And the biggest defense contractor was Johnson's Wax, whose sales to keep military floors shining were an insignificant part of the firm's revenues. In sum, Aspin was free to act in the way he discerned as best for the nation.

But Aspin was an exception. It shouldn't surprise you that in the outgoing 104th Congress, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee is Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; the chairman of the Dairy Subcommittee is Steve Gunderson, R-Wis., whose district is described as having more cows than people; or that the second ranking member of the International Relations western hemisphere subcommittee is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., a Cuban-American. Nor is it surprising that all but two of the 35 Judiciary Committee members are lawyers or that one of those non-lawyers, Sonny Bono, R-Calif., one of the very few legislators ever to hold a copyright, chose the subcommittee that handles copyright legislation. All three Virginia members from adjoining districts around Norfolk-with its many military facilities-just happen to serve on the National Security Committee. The chairman of the Resources Committee is from Alaska, and the chairman of its parks, forests and lands subcommittee is from Utah. And the delegates from Samoa, Guam and Puerto Rico all serve on the insular affairs subcommittee. I could go on, but there are 545 members of the House and Senate.

Term limits wouldn't change that kind of coziness. Legislators would still choose the same committees and continue the coziness. If you want to make a real difference, impose limits on the number of terms on a committee, not on the number of terms in office. Force legislators to shift to new committees, progressively moving further from the interest groups that prevail at home. Let's say your freshman congressman still gets to pick two committees. But he gets to serve on one for six years and the other for four years, at which point he must chose something else.

There is precedent for committee term limits. The House Budget, Ethics and Intelligence committees have term limits, all for specialized reasons-for example, no one would serve on the Ethics Committee if they had to stay there permanently.

There is a bad element to this idea. Legislators develop expertise in a few subject areas through long service on a committee. That expertise would be lost. However, the legislator would bring legislative (as opposed to topical) expertise to a new committee and bring a slightly different way of approaching issues and the broader perspective that comes from tackling more issues. The gain in breadth would at least equal the loss in depth. Legislators rely chiefly on staff for depth anyhow. It is breadth that the legislator is supposed to bring to the job.

The seniority system wouldn't change much under committee term limits. Senior members would still get first crack at chairing committees and subcommittees, but the privilege would be based on seniority in the House rather than seniority on the committee. Thus, committee members would likely be on their third or fourth pairs of committees before they became chairs. They would be that much further removed from the interest groups that dominate back home. They would have that much broader experience.

Distance and breadth. That's just what's missing.

Distance? Senior members now have spent years dining and traveling with the same narrow interest groups. That doesn't make them prostitutes. But it's hard to avoid being seduced when you always dance with the same guy.

Breadth? To be frank, members who have spent years on the same two committees commonly know very little about other issues. They read the newspapers and short memos to become "experts" sufficient to gull their constituents.

Most of the work of any legislature is done in committees. Major changes are rarely made on the floor. Apart from issues that are getting Page 1 coverage or heavily affecting their own districts, when it comes to bills on the floor from other committees, legislators tend to follow the lead of the senior member of their party on the committee. Think of it: Congress members who rail against interest groups vote with the chair or ranking minority member who has been making those interest groups happy for two or three decades.

Right now, you can expect a Detroiter to join the Labor (now Economic Opportunities) Committee and eventually become chair, and you can expect a Kansan to join Agriculture and eventually rise to chair. Think of the difference in perspective if the Detroiter chaired Agriculture and the Kansan chaired Labor.

Even with the kind of term limits now popular with voters, even with public financing of campaigns and a host of other reforms being bruited about, the current committee structure would still mean that mining policy would be determined primarily by Congress members with lots of mines back home. It's time to dig those guys out of the ground and let them try their hands at maritime policy.

Warren L. Nelson spent 20 years on Capitol Hill as a staffer on the Senate and House sides, working for individual members and then for the House Armed Services Committee.