by Edward Ring
Term limits don’t drain the swamp—they empower the permanent bureaucracy by forcing out the only elected officials experienced enough to challenge it.
Attempts to restructure government at the federal level are mostly on the Democrat agenda. Pack the US Supreme Court. Elect presidents via popular vote. Turn Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, into states with two senators each. Implement national mail-in voting, automatic voter registration, legalize ballot harvesting, lower the voting age to 16, let felons vote, let noncitizens vote. And, of course, end the Senate filibuster. If they could, Democrats would do all of this.
Meanwhile, however, there is a growing bipartisan movement to implement term limits for members of the House and Senate. A bill has been introduced in the 119th Congress, and President Trump has supported term limits consistently since he first ran for president in 2016. But federal term limits would do more harm than good. Explaining why offers insights into how an entrenched bureaucracy gains power in democracies, and California is a prime example.
Term limits came to California back in 1990 via a ballot initiative, because it was the only way the state’s Republicans, still relatively influential, could get rid of Willie Brown. For decades, Assembly Speaker Brown controlled everything that happened in the state legislature. If Brown didn’t support your bill, your bill was dead. As a 25-year veteran member of the Assembly, Brown virtually ruled Sacramento by 1990. Every piece of legislation required his imprimatur. And every aspiring Democrat, including Brown’s protégé Kamala Harris, went through Brown on their way to prominence in state politics.
The consequences have been enormous. Brown may not have been a Republican favorite, but he got things done. By virtue of his many years in the Capitol, Brown knew how every lever of power worked, and he knew every bureaucrat, every union official, and every lobbyist. He was a perennial player; he knew the game backwards and forwards, and when something had to happen in California, Brown was there to make it happen. Say what you will about his politics or his party; back then, California had a government that worked.
Today, California’s politics are gridlocked, while the state has moved from purple in the 1990s to the deepest shade of blue in the nation. This transition is in no small part because, since 1990, California’s politicians are termed out after 12 years. That limit applies to their cumulative time in the state legislature. If they serve three terms in the state assembly and then are elected to the state senate, their six years served in the assembly are deducted from how long they can serve in the senate. Ever since term limits were passed back in 1990, not one state legislator has been active for more than 12 years.
The consequences don’t invite imitation. More than ever, Sacramento is ruled by a faceless, all-powerful blob. This amorphous and unaccountable blob is a gelatinous mélange of lobbyists, union bosses, and entrenched political staffers who bounce from one elected official’s Capitol office to the next. It is an amalgamation of career professionals who spend 30–40 years in the Capitol, learning every nuance of power. They are perpetual. The politicians are transient. Term limits didn’t shrink the blob. The opposite happened.
By limiting how long politicians can serve in Sacramento, the opportunity for any politician, good or bad, to wield genuine influence is fatally undermined. It takes a few terms before any politician in Sacramento begins to fully grasp how the system works. And by then, they’re about to be termed out. There is no opportunity for elected leaders to emerge in the legislature who have developed the skill and ability to stand up to the blob. And the blob does not answer to the people.
It’s important to emphasize the variety of ways, all of them strategic, that losing long-serving and highly skilled politicians would affect the United States. The history of our federal system yields important examples of politicians who spent decades in the House or the Senate and, throughout those decades, developed as statesmen whose influence defined our politics and our culture. But we would not just lose statesmen who have earned the allegiance of their constituents and a leadership role in the House or Senate. We would lose the quiet experts and coalition builders who rallied and maintained the political will to build America.
If there had been term limits, we would not have had Henry Clay, known not only for being the architect of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850 but also for championing through Congress strategic tariffs and infrastructure spending that catalyzed America’s emergence as a manufacturing superpower in the 19th century. Term limits would have also eliminated Carl Hayden, the driving force behind massive water and power infrastructure projects in the 20th century that enabled America to become the world’s largest economy.
Clay served in the House and Senate from 1806 to 1852. Hayden served from 1912 to 1969. Their greatest accomplishments were in the latter half of their careers in politics. The projects they fought for take decades to realize. Who will provide continuity and expert oversight for national efforts of this magnitude if politicians get termed out after 12 years?
As someone who has supported President Trump ever since he emerged as a candidate for president in 2015, I am often asked if there is anything he’s ever done that I disagree with. Here in California, Democrats often perceive a Trump supporter as a member of a cult, unable to express dissent of any kind. So to be clear, I agree with almost every policy the president has enacted. My friends in Washington, DC, share stories of incredible corruption and waste that are finally being expunged; they describe agencies that were nothing but engines to disburse funds to favored constituents, with no regard for their mission or for delivering genuine results.
None of these reforms could have happened without President Trump. And while his rhetorical style may be pugilistic, unnervingly spontaneous, and at times needlessly cruel, when it comes to actions, he is almost always right. But I disagree with him on term limits.
Imagine what Washington, DC, already gripped by a deep-state bureaucracy, would be like if elected politicians were termed out of office right about the point where they’d acquired enough experience to navigate this swamp. Whatever oversight is still possible, whatever reforms and restructurings that might be in the interests of the American people would no longer have advocates who had mastered the details and could exercise long-term leadership. Of course, many members of Congress become swamp rats, entrenched, bought, manipulated, and indifferent to their constituents. But our obligation as citizens is to expose them and ensure that they lose the next election. If they’re such a problem, we must find a candidate to oppose them who can earn a majority of the votes in their district. That’s how you term-limit a bad politician. You beat them in an election.
When you eliminate the bad politicians, you also eliminate the good ones. You turn the machinery of government over to people who have spent decades learning how to control elected politicians, many of whom come into Congress without any previous experience in government. It is easy to disparage all politicians and, therefore, wish to control them by sticking a revolving door into the system and pushing everyone in and out after 12 years. But be careful what you wish for.
Photo: A lone Capitol police officer is seen in an empty corridor of the US Capitol in Washington, DC on March 19, 2020. Two US lawmakers including a Florida representative on March 18, 2020, became the first members of Congress to announce they have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP)
Edward Ring is a senior
fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also the director of
water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he
co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author
of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The
Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/13/trump-may-wish-to-reconsider-supporting-term-limits/
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