Why Term Limits
Term Limits is the Only Real Fix for America’s Broken System
For decades Americans have argued about who’s to blame for the dysfunction in Washington — Democrats, Republicans, presidents, billionaires, or special interests. But if you strip away the noise, you find something deeper. The problem isn’t left or right. It’s the system itself.
Our government was designed to work horizontally: three equal branches checking and balancing one another so that no single person or group could dominate. Over time that balance has tilted upward. Power now flows vertically, with the executive branch sitting at the top like the headquarters of a corporation. Congress, once the people’s branch, functions more like middle management, taking orders and protecting its own positions instead of representing its shareholders — the citizens.
How did this happen? The answer is human nature. When political office becomes a lifelong career, survival replaces service. Every decision starts to revolve around keeping the job — building campaign funds, pleasing party leaders, securing favorable media, and protecting future opportunities. The longer a person stays, the more dependent they become on the system that sustains them. It’s not corruption in the dramatic sense; it’s self-preservation, the same instinct that exists in every organization.
That’s why most proposed reforms, from campaign-finance rules to ethics codes, haven’t changed much. They try to regulate behavior without changing the incentive behind it. Asking a career politician to fix the system that keeps them in power is like asking a company to vote itself out of profits. Good people can’t override bad incentives.
Term limits are different. They don’t rely on better behavior; they rewrite the incentive. When someone knows their time in Congress is limited, the goal shifts from survival to impact. They have no reason to serve a party machine or a future employer. Their only leverage becomes the quality of their service to the public. That’s the mindset the founders assumed when they built a citizen legislature — people who would serve for a season and then return home.
Limiting terms would also break the hidden hierarchy that now defines Washington. Seniority would no longer determine who holds power. Lobbyists would lose the long-term relationships that guarantee influence. Presidents would find it harder to command obedience from legislators who no longer depend on them for campaign resources or political futures. The system would flatten back toward its original shape: independent branches, temporary stewardship, and constant renewal.
Some worry that term limits would remove experienced lawmakers. Experience is valuable, but it’s not scarce. Every community in America is filled with capable people who understand business, law, medicine, education, and public service. What we lack isn’t skill — it’s rotation. Fresh experience entering government is how the system stays healthy.
Term limits won’t solve every issue, but they would solve the one that makes all the others possible: the consolidation of power through permanence. When representatives know they must one day go home, they are far more likely to remember who sent them there.
This isn’t a partisan idea. It’s a structural repair. The vertical government we have today didn’t appear overnight, and it won’t disappear through ideology. It will change only when the incentives change — when service once again outweighs survival. Term limits are how we make that shift and restore the simple, horizontal balance our founders built into the design.
Bert Accomando
Founding Members
Term limits for a stronger America
TLFSA.com