What to do about Congress?

NCFCA topic: Resolved: The United States Federal Government should significantly reform Congress. NCFCA provides a Policy Resolution Background Paper (pdf) as a guide for debating the resolution.

The background paper presents “Limiters” recommending affirmatives be limited to the House and Senate, and not to “supporting agencies.” And also excluding constitutional amendments, since they require state action rather than federal. Discussions with coaches at NCFCA nationals suggests some will argue Constitutional amendments should topical.

Economic Thinking posts and presentations encourage debaters to research economic principles relevant to resolutions. In the case of Congress, Public Choice economics and Constitutional Political Economy are key. The U.S. Constitution was designed to limit the powers of Congress (and of the President). From the NCFCA background paper: “Article 1, which establishes Congress and describes its powers and limitations” with link to Constitution Annotated.

But today’s Congress (and each Congress since at least the New Deal) passes legislation far beyond the Constitution’s enumerated Article I powers. How did Congress escape the Constitution’s constraints to stretch beyond the listed powers? Economist Robert Higgs argues that we now have two Constitutions, one for everyday the other for crises. Higgs explains

Time and chance have been unkind to the hopes of the Founding Fathers. They established the Constitution to “secure the Blessings of Liberty” to themselves and their posterity, intending their framework of freedom and government to endure through storm as well as sunshine. But the dead could not forever bind the living, and the unfolding of our history during the 20th century has brought into being a second Constitution. Besides the Normal Constitution, protective of individual rights, we now have a Crisis Constitution, hostile to individual rights and friendly to the unchecked power of government officials. In national emergencies the Crisis Constitution overrides the Normal Constitution.

The great danger is that in an age of permanent emergency—the age we live in, the age we are likely to go on living in—the Crisis Constitution will simply swallow up the Normal Constitution, depriving us at all times of the very rights the original Constitution was created to protect at all times. The outlook can only dishearten those who believe that the fundamental purpose of the Constitution is to protect individuals’ rights to life, liberty, and property. Though earlier events, especially during the Civil War, foreshadowed the Crisis Constitution, World War I witnessed its unmistakable emergence. Even before the United States formally entered the war, the railroad labor troubles of 1916-17 provoked unprecedented government actions. Facing the prospect of a nationwide railroad strike when the operating brotherhoods and the railroad managers could not agree on wages and hours, President Woodrow Wilson turned to Congress, gaining passage of the Adamson Act in September 1916. In effect the act simply imposed on the interstate railroad industry a 25 percent increase in wage rates.(In the Name of Emergency, Independent.org, October 17, 2001)

Term Limits and Balanced Budgets by Tradition
My view is that term limits and federal budget reforms shouldn’t require amending the Constitution, as Congress can (or should be able to) reform itself, to return to long-established American Constitutional traditions.

Consider, for example, that the US Presidency was limited to two terms through American history, based on the example set by George Washington. No President ran for a third term before Franklin Roosevelt, who become President for life (to April 12, 1945). Similarly, Congress was a mostly citizen Congress through American history. Congressmen serving a term, sometimes more if reelected, then returned to their life as citizens.

Consider Davy Crockett who served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1827 to 1831), then a third, non-consecutive term (1833 to 1835). Davy Crockett’s Not Yours to Give story was “published in Harper’s Magazine in 1867, as written by James J. Bethune, a pseudonym used by Edward S. Ellis.”

U.S. Term Limits suggests citizens sign a petition to “bypass D.C. and impose term limits on the U.S. House and Senate by signing the national term limits petition.” But affirmative teams can’t mandate citizens sign petitions. Polling realities suggest term limit are already popular with the public:

Public approval for Congressional term limits is overwhelmingly strong, with polls consistently showing 80-87% support across a broad spectrum of the American public. This high level of support is bipartisan, though typically slightly higher among Republicans and Independents compared to Democrats. (Google AI Overview, Nov. 8, 2025)

Also from US Term Limits:

This map contains the latest term limits polling by independent polling agencies commissioned U.S. Term Limits. Nationally, 2021 results show that voters overwhelmingly believe in implementing term limits on members of Congress. Support for term limits is universal among voters and breaches political, geographic and demographic divides. Eight-in-ten voters, 80%, approve of placing term limits on members of Congress. Half of all voters, 50%, say they would be more likely to support a member of Congress who has been opposed to congressional term limits during their 20 year career in office but suddenly announced that their views had evolved and they now supported term limits.

The National Constitution Center’s article Why term limits for Congress face a challenging constitutional path (March 18, 2024) provides history and includes Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent in the 5-4 decision in U.S. Term Limits v. Thorton:

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the dissent: “Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each State of the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them in Congress. The Constitution is simply silent on this question. And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.” But since the Court’s decision in 1995, it is understood that only a constitutional amendment could place term limits on members of Congress.

Doug Bandow in How to Term-Limit Congress (Cato, January 19, 2019) encourages states to try again, passing new limits to terms of their Congressmen, and then return these limits to today’s Supreme Court:

…All that requires is one state to reimpose restrictions on congressmen and senators, and an ensuing court challenge.

Term limits are no panacea. Only an aware, active, and enlightened citizenry can make a republic work. However, term limits would improve such a people’s chances of success. The current system is biased toward the ever-expanding, ever-more-expensive state. Weakening the political class would give the rest of us a chance.