 Welcome viewers to our ongoing program focus coming to you from Channel 17 Center for Media and Democracy here in Burlington, Vermont. I'm your host Margaret Harrington in the Channel 17 newsroom and my special guest today is Ken Quinn from US Term Limits. Welcome Ken. Margaret thank you so much for having me on today I appreciate it. Thank you very much we have this very important subject here the title for our program is it's time we term limit Congress. So Ken let's start off with some questions here. Would you start off by telling us about the term limits for Congress legislation that is being supported by some bipartisan legislators here in Vermont? Yeah we have some real exciting news just to kind of give folks a little bit of background to what this issue is about we we're trying to get the states to propose a term limit amendment on Congress now here in New Hampshire Vermont we have two sponsors we have a sponsor in the house the the resolution is JRH2 and the sponsors Bob Helm and then we have a sponsor in the Senate Senator Debbie Ingram and that's going to be coming out probably not a week or so and what this resolution is that we need the state legislature to pass is a what's called an article 5 application it's applying to Congress to call an article 5 convention to allow the states to meet draft the amendment vote on it and then send it out to the states for ratification so we need 34 states to call the convention and then 38 states to ratify the amendment and so that's what this resolution is all about. Okay so that's article 5 of the United States Constitution. Yes yes which is the amending provision in the Constitution. Okay now briefly basically what article 5 allows is only two ways to propose amendments either two-thirds of both houses of Congress propose it and then send it out to the states for ratification and that's how we have gotten all of our 27 amendments came from Congress. The second option allows the states the exact same ability to propose amendments and so we need two thirds of the states to agree on the subject matter because it's limited to what they submit in their applications and so our application is for a single subject which is a congressional term-limit amendment. Okay and can you give us some idea of what the language is in that proposed amendment to the Vermont legislature? Yeah actually it's very we are not even advocating how long the term should be we just want to have the states to have this discussion on behalf of the American people. Now we are also trying to advance this through Congress so we actually do have an amendment in Congress right now and that amendment calls for limiting US senators to two terms so their term is six years each so that'd be a total of 12 years and then limiting House of Representatives to three terms for a total of six years. So one person combined could serve a total of 18 years in Congress. Now that's currently in Congress right now. I don't have a lot of hope that's going to get passed by the two thirds of Congress and so that's why we're advancing it through the states and what the state initiative is not advocating those specific terms. We left that kind of open to let the states have that discussion in the convention. Okay so how long has this been before Congress? How long is this this proposal? Well the our amendment in Congress we typically have it introduced every session and like I said we actually this year we did have a committee hearing on behalf of this amendment. I think it's been 20 years since we've been even been able to get a committee hearing and so obviously our biggest roadblock to getting this done is Congress itself and so that's why we need the states to do this because without the state's pressuring Congress to do something it's just probably not going to happen. Now personally I don't I want to go all the way to have the states have this meeting to do it because I think the amendment that they draft and vote on is probably going to have a little more teeth into it than what Congress would propose. Okay and what so far is the progress with the states that having a voting for this convention? Yeah well the process is very interesting these these applications they're called article five applications. It requires two thirds of the states to submit or basically it's a passage of a resolution by the legislatures so we need today 34 state legislatures to pass these on the same subject matter. Now there's been over 400 of these applications passed by the states now they they've never gotten to that critical mass of two thirds. It came very close a few times for the 17th amendment the 17th amendment which is the direct election of senators was proposed by Congress but it was because of the pressure the states put on through this process they get within two states shy of calling the convention to propose it themselves and that pressure prodded Congress to do it. So right now there are 15 state legislatures that have submitted an application to Congress on this subject matter. Okay no that brings us to what is the major resistance to you as congressional term limits? Well number one would be Congress they don't like this idea you know the people the American people 82% in a recent poll 82% of the American voters want term limits on Congress and that polls high with Republicans Democrats independence across the board it's it's really a very popular subject. Now back in our history back in the 1990s 23 states actually passed laws most of them at the ballot box by the people to put term limits on their own members of Congress in their states and unfortunately what happened was in the case against us it was US term limits versus thoughts and US Supreme Court ruled against those state laws overturned all of them and ruled that the only way this can be accomplished was under Article 5 of the US Constitution either by Congress or the states. Okay yeah so we're pushing it both ways and I'm very excited that we have this in the Vermont legislature the Senate resolution is going to be coming out probably next week and so if you're out there listening and watching we need your help we want to get this passed this is a reform that is desperately needed for the American people Washington DC Congress is broken it's dysfunctional and we need to send new people with fresh ideas down to DC and get things done that need to get done the incumbents in Washington who have been there for decades continue to kick the cans kick the can down the road on really important issues and the problem is they seem to care more about their reelection and maintaining power and this will help break up that backlog that we have. Well can can you tell people here in Vermont voters here what we can do about the resolution the pending resolution? Well here the first thing you could do I really appreciate is sign our petition at termlimits.com that's important because that's how I'm going to communicate with everybody in the state once you sign that you'll be in our database and we only use it to communicate through email and we will be sending out calls to action we'll be doing probably events at the Capitol with definitely public hearings we're hoping to get a public hearing here in Vermont and the Senate and the House so that the people of Vermont can come and share in front of the members of the committees why they want this and so we are going to need as many people in Vermont as possible to make send the emails to their legislators asking them to pass this and come on out to the Capitol to testify so that's really critical if they don't hear from the their constituents they don't see it as that important of an issue and so we just got to make some noise and the the website is www.termlimits.com yeah okay and we can right there in the front okay great so and how do we get to this how did we in our history in the United States our short history how did we get to this being acceptable that politicians have lifetime positions in the US Congress how did this come about yeah it's it's fascinating history part of it has to do with our lifespans lifespans have greatly increased over the decades due to technology and you know back in the old days people didn't live to 70 and 80 all that often so but what happened was our first Constitution had term limits back then they called it rotation of office so the articles of confederation had rotation of office many of the state constitutions had rotation of office term limits and what the reason for that was the founders believe that anybody who holds a seat for too long it gets to their head and it becomes more about maintaining power and influence than doing the will of the people and so they saw rotation of office or what we call term limits today as a probably the number one way of protecting our freedom in our liberty and not letting it turn into an elite aristocracy unfortunately what happened is over time it's human nature and we have just kind of not paid a lot of attention now back in the 1990s the American people were really pushing for term limits as we saw with the with the state's passage of those state laws unfortunately because state legislators have been sort of unaware of their own authority under article five or in some of them have been afraid of using this they have allowed this continue for decades and so we need the state legislators to stand up use their authority under article five they had the same authority to propose amendments as Congress does now I don't want to go down too far a rabbit hole here but Congress has introduced 12,000 amendments to the US Constitution 12,000 since 1789 only 33 of those were proposed by the two-thirds needed and then 27 of those have been ratified on the other side the states have never introduced one under article five so they've never even had the opportunity to meet to discuss an issue and all we're seeking is to give the states the same opportunity Congress has taken advantage of 12,000 times that's all this is so so Ken could you go into what were the results when there was a rotation of office what were the results in legislation well it yeah if you if you were to look at our founders our framers many of them were in office for many years but they didn't hold the same seat they moved around governor Congress Senate and so this doesn't prevent somebody from serving the people it just prevents them from holding one seat for decades and so it's it keeps the government robust it keeps the representation closer to the to the people the voters and it gives more opportunity for regular folks citizens to participate in our government and so it's critical to maintaining a functioning democracy and so we need to have term limits so that the will of the people that our voices heard right now they're not listening to us they listen to the funders they listen to the packs the lobbyists and the special interest groups that are spending millions of dollars down in Washington and yet they leave us behind and that everybody knows that and this is the only way we can fix it well then have we reached a tipping point and will term limits soon be the law in the United States well we haven't reached the tipping point yet but we need to and the only way we're going to reach that tipping point is by getting the people to rise up and demand this we cannot depend on Congress to do it they've been talking about term limits every year last year alone 60 amendments were introduced by Congress 60 about 15 of those were for term limits ours amongst the others and it gets lip service you know I believe the sponsors intend and and want it but we can never get enough of them in Congress to pass it by the two thirds and so we need the states and we need the people in the states to demand from their state legislator not their federal legislators their state legislators to do this and we need to take action we can't allow this to continue much longer because things are only going to get worse if you really want to make a difference in the direction of our nation we need to initiate term limits it's not the silver bullet for everything but what it will do it will break up the power that the incumbent party has in Washington DC it's this is not a left or right problem they're both guilty it's those in power they're controlling everything and by having term limits established on Congress it will get infusion of new people with new ideas new energy and will break up this this hold that the lobbyists have over these incumbents that have been there for decades and so I'm excited about it I think it's going to be a tremendous reform but it's going to be a very heavy lift once we get close to calling this convention the amount of money that's going to be spent to stop us is going to be overwhelming and it's going to be a tough battle but we can get it done we've done it once before with the president we have term limits on the president that it's the 22nd amendment and I want to mention that briefly because next week on February 27th is national term limits day we started this last year as a way to educate the folks the people on this this effort and we chose that day because that's the date the 22nd amendment was ratified in 1951 which put two terms on the U.S. presidents 1951 1951 that's within a lot of our our lifetime so yes and so if it's good enough for the president which I believe it is it should be good enough for members of Congress and we've got to get it done and well what I will let's go in deeper into what are the main benefits of having congressional term limits yeah there's many we would have a greater representation of citizens you would right now a lot of folks in Washington they become career politicians they know that they can turn that into a lifelong career we would have people from different backgrounds teachers artists farmers instead of the lawyers and the multi-millionaire CEOs you know we just need better representation term limits actually would give regular people like you and I a real shot of of winning an election because right now it takes millions of dollars to go against an incumbents and a lot of good people don't even bother to run for office because they know they can't raise that kind of money with term limits people will know that hey in two years that seats gonna be open I've got a good shot at that and so they will take the time and plan and run for that seat term limits is provides fair and competitive elections right now only about 20% of the races for Congress are competitive 20% and we need to make that a hundred percent and term limits will go a long way to making that happen we will get new people with fresh ideas we will break up this hold that the big corporations have the the packs the lobbies have on these individuals in Washington DC it will reduce corruption tremendously right now 97% of corporate pack money goes to incumbents they don't give it to a challenger they give it to the people that they've been owned in their back pocket for decades and so we got to change this this corrupt system it we have to change the structure of it and that's what this will help accomplish well going back into a little bit into the history like in 1951 the amendment limits the presidency to to two terms and but but what what were was there any tipping point in the past for for your term limits to it well I would say the 1990s was a tipping point that's when 23 states tried to put it on their own members of Congress 22 states passed laws to put term limits on their state legislatures so the 1990s was really when term okay they were the state legislators Congress and the state legislatures and right now out of those 22 states 15 of those are still in place so some of the states overturned their term limits wait a minute so the the U.S. Supreme Court couldn't overturn the state's constriction on correct yeah oh so that either and I don't know every states a little bit different some of those states it was done by the legislature I believe some required an amendment to their constitution so every states a little bit different now I'm from Maine we have term limits in Maine on the state legislators basically it doesn't ban them for life they have to serve I think four terms in the house then four terms in the Senate they have to sit out for I think one term and then they can go back and hold those seats again now so currently we have 15 states that still have term limits on their state legislatures now what's interesting there was a report that came out I think it was the mercadics I forget the name is report on the fine fiscal ratings of the states all 50 states of four out of the top five of those states have term limits on their legislature now I'm not saying I'm not making the connection that term limits make a state more fiscally responsible but what I'm saying is it doesn't just what we hear often is that oh terms are bad for a state you know it's the end of the world it's simply not true it just simply not true it allows more people to participate in the government and what's good about that is once they're out they have to now live under the laws that they passed and so we have more people think about that if Congress if we had a lot of people going to Congress knowing they had a short amount of time to get the job done and then had to return to live under those laws I think we'd see a lot of different laws being passed or or not passed right now that they've got it kind of cushy because they're kind of protected and so we need to change that you know it's seen it does seem like a big machine machine politics that has been in place for a very long time I'm excited though we can get this done and what's great about it is this is something that the people want you know out of all of the issues out there today this is probably the number one issue that can unite everybody because everyone sees the dysfunction in Washington DC they they're frustrated with Congress they see that it's more about them raising money for their reelection and their party and doing the favors from the funders what we need is to change that take that power away from them redistribute that power to the people back to the people so that more people can be involved in this process think about this think about the choices we will have as voters every time there's an open seat election we're gonna have instead of the same two people running for that seat we're gonna have maybe 10 people in a primary you know so it's going to increase the competition and hopefully increase better candidates over time for us and so it's it's a really a win-win for everybody okay and it's it's not about there's no possibility of eliminating money from the whole process well not completely but it will do it greatly reduce the amount of money spent right now because it's right now they are so hold into the lobbyists and the PACs because they have to get reelected and they get caught up in this vicious cycle of constantly running for reelection and raising money for that you know 60 minutes to the great reports it's called dialing for dollars I think it's called on YouTube just Google that 30 to 70% of times by members of Congress has spent raising money for their party or the reelection with term limits money will not be such an issue because they're going to be there for a short period of time and then they're gone the lobbyists are going to lose the the impact that they have on these people because you're gonna be we're gonna be crashing the shores of Congress with new people all the time and now the lobbyists are instead of owning them for decades they're gonna have to actually defend their issue and sell their issue on the integrity of it and the importance of it than just buying them off that's the importance of this so it will go a long way to reducing the amount of money in politics okay so can you presented this very clearly that we are it in it in a kind of crisis about term limits that it seems to be accepted by the great populace because we are uneducated about the possibility of not of actually having term limits yeah I'd like to give the voters hope you know we can do more than just elect people you know electing people is great but that's not our only option the framers in their wisdom gave us article 5 as a check against a runaway federal government and one of the reasons they gave us this convention mode was because they knew that the government they were creating would they actually predicted would become tyrannical and would not listen to the people and so they wanted the people through their state legislators to have a voice in the amending process and if they felt there there were certain amendments needed that Congress has refused to propose then you know what we'll do it through the states and the states will get it done because only the states can amend the Constitution that they're the ones that have the power to ratify amendments Congress can't ratify Congress can only propose so why are we leaving it up to Congress to always be the one proposing if they're the problem if they're not listening to us why do we think they're going to give us the solution so it's time that we turned to the states and advocate our legislators to pass our term limit application to pass other applications that are out there that can really bring necessary reforms to our government so what what is your plan as as a the regional director of us term limits today well my plan ultimately is to get that is convention and have the states propose this amendment that's my long-term goal in the short term I cover 17 states and I was sharing with you earlier Margaret how I've got like 10 states that are active right now so I'm going to be doing a lot of traveling I'm very excited that Vermont is introducing the resolution it should be coming out I think next week and that's why for your listeners please email me or first go to our website sign that petition I will be sending out notifications of the entry of the resolution the calls to action if they want to help me I need help we need grassroots people in the state I live in Maine is a little bit of a drive for me this morning about three and a half hours so we need local people to volunteer to get come alongside me and help us get this done because we can do this if we get people involved and you're meeting with who is that again I have a meeting I'm heading to the Capitol right now to meet with Senator Debbie Ingram who is our Senate sponsor and that's going to be coming out hopefully next week the resolution and as Senate sponsor she will introduce this proposal yep she's introducing the resolution our representative of Bob Helm has already introduced it in the House so we're going to have it in the House and the Senate this year and we want to have the committees call at least a public hearing so we can have the people of Vermont come and speak on behalf of this issue okay and then the process would be a public hearing from the committee but what is the name of the committee oh boy I I think it's government operations on the House I I can get that for you okay if you just look up JR H2 that's the resolution you'll show you which a committee it's been assigned to okay so how the process works is you know once the the committee will have a hearing where the public is allowed to come and testify and usually in every states a little bit different but most states will typically they will vote on that resolution or that bill week or so afterwards not always but in Maine that's how it's usually done in my state so some states if it passes the committee then it's straight to the House or the Senate for a vote the full-floor vote and then the process starts all over again in the other body okay some states even if it doesn't pass the committee it still may get a vote in Maine everything gets voted on in Maine even if it even if the committee didn't recommend it so we need to get to a hearing here in Vermont we need to pass it there's absolutely no reason Vermont actually passed an article 5 resolution a few years ago for a campaign finance amendment and so this is a great reform along with campaign finance and that's what we need to do we gotta you have this hearing and get a vote this year and pass it and we always here in Vermont we always have time town meeting resolutions where each each section of Vermont can pass resolutions at their town meeting so there's a possibility this could get on maybe next year's town meeting well that's a great idea I haven't really thought about that but if that would help us absolutely I'll have to talk to you more about that because that's a great idea please talk to the legislators when you meet with them today okay yeah I'm very excited so we really could use a lot of help here in Vermont and signing that petition will get you connected to me and I promise I don't send a lot of emails we don't send out a lot of emails but it's very important when we do yeah and and you've awakened us immensely today can and just send us out with with some of the main reasons again why should we why should we we should limit terms for Congress to begin with the con with the US Congress yeah well we all know Washington DC is broken it's dysfunctional the biggest problem we see down there is that those that hold the power are refusing to make the tough choices for the American people we have a health care crisis immigration crisis you name it spending credit we've been hearing this for decades nothing's getting done and so it's time that we the people rose up and the first thing we need to do is eliminate how long people can stay in office it can no longer be a career for people a lifelong career and what termums will do is reinvigorate this government of ours we'll get the we'll have the ability to send new people with fresh ideas more people will participate the voters will have more options and through that we will then have enough people down in Washington who will tackle the tough issues because now they're free they know hey I only have a short period of time to get this done I'm gonna get it done they don't become trapped on this vicious cycle of we're having to raise money to win their reelection we gotta end it it is time to end that only terms can get that done so we would really appreciate your support I'll go to term limits dot com sign our petition my email address is there I think on the screen Kay Quinn at term limits dot com if you want to help there's a volunteer tab fill out the survey that's a great way getting connected with me and I'm looking forward to working with you and let's pass this in Vermont this year thank you Ken Quinn US term limits all right thank you Margaret for your time I really appreciate it thank you viewers and thanks channel 17 goodbye for now