Gilbert Gutknecht: “during the last campaign, many of us campaigned on the whole issue of term limits, and it is something that a lot of the…”

“during the last campaign, many of us campaigned on the whole issue of term limits, and it is something that a lot of the American people have asked for. In fact, all the polling information demonstrates that between three-fourths and 85 percent of the American people support some form of term limits. Earlier in this Congress, we had a vote for the first time in the history of this Congress, I think, we had a vote on term limits. Unfortunately, we were unable to get the two-thirds majority necessary to pass that by. We went back to some of our offices, I went back to my office and talked to some of the people on my staff and said: What could we do in terms of if we can't get a term limits bill passed this year, what possibly can we do to take some of the fun out of it? We also had heard a lot in our campaigns and we hear at our town meetings. I, for example, have had 75 town meetings in my district, and another issue that comes up frequently is the whole issue of pension reform. We read about some of our retiring colleagues or some of the former colleagues that have retired from this body, and we hear about six-figure pensions which they will receive for the rest of their lives, adjusted for inflation, and, frankly, I think that is an outrage that a lot of the American people feel. So we came up with a relatively simple bill, it is H.R. 1618, which would change the way that pensions for Members of Congress are accrued.”