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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

Not an excuse at all but part of the problem of our system, why they run home so fast, is they are constantly fundraising for their next election. They spend a massive amount of time in office just fundraising.

Not sure how this can ever be fixed.

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In the UK there are spending limits. £30k per year per parliamentary seat. £18.96m per party per election.

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/elections/election-spe...

It keeps our campaigns pleasingly short, and the advertising deliciously mundane and cheap-looking. Also it preserves a nice equilibrium, it's in nobody's interests to try and break or change the limits.

It's actually really easy to fix with publicly funded elections, or other campaign finance reform.

That would require a constitutional amendment to overturn 30 years of legal precedent that gives an enormous advantage to the wealthy and connected. It is illegal for Congress to put everyone on the same playing field and disallow wealthy candidates from self funding. So any public financing would simply give an enormous advantage to wealthy candidates and dark money groups with the resources to overwhelm the publicly financed guys.

Right now in order to compete you must fundraise constantly or risk not having funds to counter the spin of a bankrolled opponent. It would be interesting if the Supreme Court simply eliminated the contribution limits but this would give even more of an incentive for congressmen simply to sell their votes("Vote for us and we will give you X gazillion dollars over four years vote against us and we drop millions in dark money against you and fund your opponents").

No, just cap the spending and maximum donation.

That doesn't get you around the Citizens United issue, where 3rd parties spend $$$ on election messaging which favor particular candidates but are not directly involved in the campaign.

The 1st Amendment would need to be dramatically modified to make significant change in campaign financing.

It can be fixed by putting $100 caps on donations per person. Then they'll also work that much harder to please the people, not his/her "biggest donors".

easy solution: term limits

Which itself leads to a permanent issue of elected public servants with no long-term experience on the very important function of leading the nation.

That leaves the expertise in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who could easily maneuver the constantly-inexperienced politicians in the direction they wish.

Pick your poison...

Absolute term limits would probably also worsen the trend of retiring congressman becoming lobbyists.

But what if you only limited the number of consecutive terms? This is a solution more directly targeting the actual problem: the advantage of incumbency.

This also creates more positive feedback between their lives in the public and private sector, congressmen hoping to be reelected will need to do something positive when out of office, and when in office they will have more understanding of the lives of working people than those who have spent the last 50 years in congress.

It's important to note that limits on consecutive terms were used by the Greeks, Romans, and supported by many founding fathers (who admired the Romans especially).

That might work indeed. At least no obvious problems come to mind, which is usually a good start.

term limits do not address the problem of money in politics.

They just create a bigger incentive for a revolving door between industry and legislative office.

better solution: comprehensive campaign financing reform (e.g. all donations must be done by an individual, strict limits on the amount of financing, limits on the amount of advertising and type that candidates are allowed to do, public disclosure of donors, amounts, and campaign spending etc...)

Isn't that what lead to the creation of the SuperPACs?

The fungibility of money and nature of speech makes this hard to do without limiting free speech in some way.

I disagree. Since when is money classified as free speech?

Where can do you draw a line between supporting a cause and supporting a candidate?

God I'm so sick of this lame proposal. What's your evidence that this will improve things? Because we already have term limits in California and our legislature is a byword for dysfunction.

The only way I would support term limits for politicians is if there were a corresponding term limit provision for civil employees. No one should be spending a lifetime feeding off the public trough.

More of a problem for Representatives than Senators.

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