A few days ago we published two constitutional amendments to fix the budget. Today we're adding a third—and from here on, we're going to publish each one on its own, so you can pick up whichever fight matters most to you. This one is about as popular as any idea in American politics, and it has never crossed the finish line: congressional term limits. You can read the whole thing, and send it to your own member of Congress, on our new term limits action page.
The Problem: A Permanent Political Class
Congress was never supposed to be a lifetime career. The Founders pictured citizen legislators—people who serve for a while and then go home to live under the laws they passed. What we have instead is a permanent political class: members who stay for 20, 30, even 40 years, piling up seniority, power, and lobbyist relationships while drifting further and further from the people they represent.
The system is built to keep them there. House incumbents win re-election above 90% in most cycles, and the Senate isn't far behind. Gerrymandered districts, enormous fundraising advantages, name recognition, and party machinery all tilt the field toward whoever already holds the seat. The result is a Congress that answers to the incentives of staying in power—donors, leadership, the next campaign—rather than to the voters who sent it there.
Why It Takes a Constitutional Amendment
Voters already tried to do this the easy way, and the Supreme Court closed that door. In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), the Court ruled that neither the states nor Congress can add qualifications—like term limits—to federal office. Twenty-three states had passed their own congressional term limits by ballot initiative; the Court struck all of them down. The only remaining path is to amend the Constitution. So that's what we wrote.
What Our Amendment Does
The core is simple: six terms in the House (12 years) and four terms in the Senate (24 years). But three design choices are what make it both real and realistic.
It's a lifetime limit, not just a consecutive one. Some proposals only stop consecutive service—you leave for one term, then come right back, forever. Ours doesn't. Once you've hit your limit in a chamber, you're done there. A real limit should be a real limit.
It counts partial terms fairly. If someone wins a special election to fill a vacancy, it only counts against their limit if more than a year of that term remained—so serving a few months of someone else's seat doesn't cost a member a full term.
It includes a "clean slate." Service before the amendment is ratified doesn't count. This is the honest, practical piece: an amendment that immediately fired every long-serving member the day it passed would never get through a Congress made up of long-serving members. By starting everyone's clock at ratification, we make the reform achievable—while still guaranteeing that from that day forward, no one builds a 40-year career again.
The Honest Trade-offs
We try to be straight about the downsides of what we propose. Yes, you lose some experienced legislators—but twelve years in the House and twenty-four in the Senate is plenty of time to build genuine expertise, and it shifts power away from the lobbyists who never term out. Yes, the clean slate lets current members stay—that's the price of a reform that can actually pass instead of one that feels satisfying and dies. And no, term limits alone won't fix Washington; they work best alongside the other reforms we're proposing, like a single-subject rule and the line-item veto. We put those objections right on the page, because a proposal that can't survive its own strongest criticisms doesn't deserve to pass.
The Politics: The Public Is Already With Us
Congressional term limits are one of the rare ideas that unite Americans across every line. Polls have for decades shown support in the neighborhood of three out of four Americans, with strong majorities among Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. The opposition isn't the public. It's the small group of people who benefit from the current system—being asked to vote for limits on themselves.
That gap, between what the country overwhelmingly wants and what Congress will give itself, is the entire reason a movement like ours exists.
What You Can Do
This is the one reform members are most reluctant to hand themselves, which means constituent pressure is everything—and the public is overwhelmingly on our side. On our term limits action page you'll find the full amendment text, a plain-language explainer, and a one-page summary as downloadable Word documents; links to look up your Representative and Senators; and a ready-to-send letter you can make your own.
Read it, download it, and ask your member of Congress to introduce or co-sponsor it. The people want this. The only thing standing in the way is the people it would limit—and that's a fight worth having.