in of an irresponsible electorate. The accountability provided at the ballot box would in effect be ceded to government, and our freedom to vote would be forever limited. The stabilizing role of the Senate, already badly weakened by the 17th Amendment, would be reduced by term limits to a perpetual lame-duck assembly. At any given time, many of its members would be lame ducks who would have no accountability to the voters during their final six years. Accountability in the House would also fall victim to lame-duckery. Report cards on spending, such as the highly effective TRIM (Tax Reform IMmediately) program, would have no impact on House members serving their last term. A large number of lame-duck House members, who at all times would be coasting piously through their final two years, would be immune to the public response to their spending records as reported in the national TRIM Bulletins.Our nation's Founders had great faith in a free and informed populace. They expected length of service to parallel the devotion and patriotism of those elected. At one point during the 1787 Convention, Governor Morris arose to comment on a term-limit proposal that had just been defeated: "The ineligibility proposed by the clause as it stood tended to destroy the great motive to good behavior, the hope of being rewarded by a re-appointment. It was saying to him, make hay while the sun shines." In The Federalist, #72, Hamilton noted that "one of the ill effects of the exclusion from re-election would be a diminution of the inducements to good behavior. There are few men who would not feel much less zeal in the discharge of a duty when they were conscious that the advantage of the station with which it was connected must be relinquished at a determinate period, than when they were permitted to entertain a hope of obtaining, by meriting, a continuance of them. This position will not be disputed so long as it is admitted that the desire of reward is o...
