Term Limits & Real Accountability

Put a 12-year limit on Congress — and I’ve already limited myself. Public service shouldn’t be a 28-year career. 12 years is enough to learn the job and get real things done, without becoming a fixture who answers to the system instead of the people. The honest part most won’t tell you: universal term limits take a constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that nothing less works, so I’ll co-sponsor and fight for one. But I won’t wait for Washington to limit itself: I’ve pledged to hold myself to 12 years, and when my time’s up I’ll hand this seat back to the people, not to a successor I pick.

Call on both parties to clean their own house — no amendment required. Here’s what Washington won’t admit: the parties don’t have to wait for an amendment. Each one can set its own rules and make a term limit a condition of its endorsement and its money — and stop propping up members who’ve overstayed their moment. Term limits are one of the most popular ideas in the country, with every kind of voter. The party that leads on this, that trusts the people instead of protecting its incumbents, will win back trust, energy, and elections. I hold myself to 12 years. Both parties should too.

Put conflicts of interest in the daylight — in real time. Right now a member files a financial snapshot once a year and reports trades weeks later, so by the time you learn where your representative’s money is, the vote’s over. By then it’s just paperwork. I’d require live, public disclosure: a searchable record of where a member’s money, income, and interests sit, updated as it changes. Paired with a ban on trading individual stocks in office, it comes down to one thing — you can see, the moment it happens, whether the person writing the laws stands to get richer from them.

Make every program earn its place with sunset reviews. A sunset review is simple: instead of running forever on autopilot, a program or agency gets an expiration date and has to prove it still works before renewal — real goals, real numbers, an independent audit of where the money went. Pass, and the program continues. Fail, or finish the job, and it expires or gets rebuilt. This isn’t tearing government down with a chainsaw. The reckless, across-the-board cuts we’ve seen hurt the people who need help most. It’s the opposite: protecting what works by making everything prove its worth, and rooting out the fraud and waste that hides in programs no one’s examined in 20 years — billions of your tax dollars, spent with nobody watching.

Give the ethics rules real teeth. Today’s rules are guidelines with no enforcement. Congress polices itself, and the office meant to investigate wrongdoing can only suggest, never act. So members steer deals to companies they own or that fund their campaigns, get rich off the public payroll, then leave to lobby for the same interests — and nothing happens. I’d give the rules teeth: independent enforcement that can actually investigate and penalize, hard bans on self-dealing, and real consequences when someone crosses the line. We should hold the people who write the nation’s laws to the highest standard, not the lowest.