Freshman Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., is already taking aim at the Washington establishment by teaming up with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a fellow Pennsylvania Republican, to try to enact term limits for members of Congress.
McCormick introduced a joint resolution on the Senate floor on Thursday that would mandate that U.S. senators and representatives could serve a maximum of 12 years in each legislative body. The bill reflects legislation previously introduced by Fitzpatrick in the House. That means senators could only serve two six-year terms in the Senate, and representatives could only serve six two-year terms in the House.
The legislation wouldn’t apply to members who have served beginning before the 118th Congress (2023-2024), a crucial move if the legislation is to have any chance of passage.
“Term limits must either apply to everybody, or they apply to nobody. The same rules must apply to everyone,” Fitzpatrick told The Daily Signal.
“My firm and long-held belief is that term limits must apply to everybody, at all levels of government, because I believe that this was the intention of our nation’s Founders, and I also believe that this would have a very positive net-effect on our nation,” the Pennsylvania congressman said.
In order for McCormick’s joint resolution to become a constitutional amendment, it first would have to garner support from two-thirds of the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate followed by ratification by three-fourths of the U.S. state legislatures.
When he was running for Senate last May, McCormick derided the idea that one should need to be in the Senate for decades to have a positive impact.
“Somebody said to me, ‘You’ll just be getting seniority, then you can just make a difference,’” McCormick explained. “I said, ‘Oh my God. If you have to go to Washington for 12 years to get seniority to make a difference, the system’s screwed up.’”
The freshman Pennsylvania senator, who has promised to serve only two terms, defeated longtime Senate incumbent Bob Casey in November, who was seeking a fourth six-year term.
According to a Congressional Research Service report, “The average years of service for Members elected to the 118th Congress, as of Jan. 3, 2023, when the Congress convened, was 8.5 years for the House and 11.2 years for the Senate.” That likely indicates that, in practice, term limits would reduce the segment of Congress that makes a career of federal public service.
A Pew Research Center survey from 2023 found that a whopping 87% of American adults support limiting the number of terms members of Congress can serve. Additionally, 79% also supported putting a maximum age limit in place for elected officials in Washington.
According to Pew, for the 119th Congress, the average age of voting members is 57.5 years in the House of Representatives and 64.7 years in the Senate. The average age for freshman members of the House is nearly a decade younger than incumbent members.
