Mike Thompson: “I would like to take up once again the business before the Chamber, the constitutional amendment on term limits. This…”

“I would like to take up once again the business before the Chamber, the constitutional amendment on term limits. This amendment would provide for a limitation of 12 years for Members of the U.S. Senate and 12 years for the House of Representatives. It is a constitutional amendment which will require two-thirds vote of this body and then ratification by the States. It is prospective in nature. That is what we are about here today. It has been a long time coming. I believe this is the first time that a constitutional term limits amendment has worked its way through the committee system. I was proud to be able to sponsor the amendment coming out of the Judiciary Committee, and now we find it finally on the floor of the U.S. Senate for the first time in history. I appreciate the leadership and the assistance of the majority leader in seeing that this has come about. There was a term limits vote in 1947, as I read my history. I think term limits got one vote at that time. So it has been right at 50 years now since there has been any vote at all on the issue of term limits. I find that absolutely remarkable because poll after poll after poll indicates that upward of 70 to 75 percent of the people in this country support term limits.”