O'Rourke supports congressional term limits as Arizona Senate vote nears

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Betoorourke
Beto O'Rourke at the Inter-American Dialogue conference in 2016 | Wikipedia

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A bill currently sits in the Arizona Senate that would allow for congressional term limits, an issue that Democratic presidential hopeful and former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke has been talking about for some time.

SCR 1014 will call for the proposal of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to set term limits for U.S. Senators and House Representatives. Last May, O'Rourke posted about term limits on Medium, citing that the longer a person is a member of Congress, the less connected they become.

"I believe that principle should be enshrined in our Constitution," O'Rourke wrote in the post.

O'Rourke said that he and others recognize that imposing term limits on members of Congress, as well as removing PAC money from politics and putting an end to gerrymandering, will bring new ideas to democracy.

"We see that the longer you serve in Congress, the less connected, the less responsive, the less accountable you can become to the people you represent," O'Rourke said in the piece.

He added that people need to recognize that members of Congress often focus on getting reelected at the expense of addressing our country's greatest concerns. 

O'Rourke has also been quoted about discussing the idea of term limits with his wife Amy before he ran for Congress.

"When Amy and I were first talking about running for Congress in 2011-2012, we decided that we would do term limits, and not serve more than four years,” he said in a Newsweek interview. “In part, it was, ‘I just don't want you to be an a**hole; I haven't met somebody in this line of work who doesn't become one, that doesn't think that they are so important only they can do it.'"

RealClearPolitics has O'Rourke currently polling fourth in the Democratic presidential nomination.

A survey by Scott Rasmussen found that 81 percent of voters across the country favor term limits for congressional members.

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