by Stephen Pate

Created on: December 07, 2009   Last Updated: December 09, 2009

Should Senators and Congressmen have a term limit? No, they shouldn't. Many advocate term limits for our legislators because it would help prevent abuse of power, corruption and influence by lobbyists. However what they don't take into account is that it will eject our most experienced and knowledgeable members from Congress.

The United States federal government only has one office that has constitutional term limits, and that is for the President of the United States. However, this limit was not initially put in the Constitution when the Founding Fathers wrote it. Presidential term limits only arose from the Twenty-second Amendment, which was ratified in 1951.

Prior to the Twenty-second Amendment, Presidents traditionally served at most two terms, in recognition of George Washington limiting himself to two terms rather than continuing to lead and relegating the United States to a de facto monarchy.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt ignored this tradition and was elected into office for an unprecedented four terms, Congress passed the Twenty-second Amendment to limit how often one man can serve as President of the United States.

Term limits for the President is an important aspect of American democracy. The President has very broad and very sweeping powers, the better for him to execute the laws of the nation with ease.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the United States' executive branch was the same as the Confederation's Congress. This meant that the nation's power to enforce the laws were as divided as the nation's power to create laws.

This division in a group executive caused the Constitutional Convention to create a strong singular executive branch under one person. Because the whole of the enforcement of laws in the U.S. is ultimately under one person, it would be difficult to undermine that enforcement.

Within the executive branch, the President would be the sole head of executive authority for ease of enforcement. This is why he has so many broad strong powers, and why the office has term limits to prevent abuse of those powers.

Congress is a different body altogether. While the executive relies on hierarchal chain of command to pursue the President's policies, the legislature relies on competing division of power within it to provide for legislation.

Congress has many powers, but it must act in a majority in order to use those powers. How the majority uses Congress' powers is dependant on the Senators and Congressmen who are elected into office.

This, not

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