Close examination of the congressional record shows that of the four hundred and thirty-five congressmen currently holding office in the U.S. House of Representatives, over sixty, or fifteen percent, have served ten consecutive two-year terms or more.
The five most senior members have held House office for an incredible one hundred and seven consecutive terms, or a combined total of two hundred and fourteen years; an average of almost twenty-two terms or forty-three years each.
Many of these representatives also have held elective offices or other government positions for many years in Washington or their home states prior to their election to the U.S. Congress. So it seems that they have spent the entirety of their adult lives in government employ, far from the daily issues that concern most Americans.
Interesting to note is that all of the most senior representatives chair powerful House committees or subcommittees, and wield tremendous power over their more junior colleagues, all legislation, and trillions of our budget dollars. They determine how much of our money is collected in federal taxes and how, when and where it is spent.
We believe that too many of these congressmen have clung to public office for so long they cannot possible conceive what life in the real world is like, and are certainly not the "citizen legislators" our founding fathers envisioned.
Currently, two hundred and eighty-four, or sixty-six percent of these representatives have held office longer than the four consecutive terms that we recommend in our proposed constitutional amendment.
Although ACT NOW! is more concerned with the fundamental framework, and not the political makeup of Congress, it is interesting to note that the vast majority, and all of the top ten, of our longest serving representatives are Democrats. We don't attempt to draw any conclusions from this fact, but some might find it peculiar that so few Democrats ever seem to relinquish office voluntarily.
We have included photographs, committee positions, and the number of terms each have held office on the top ten longest serving members of the House below. Several of these gentleman have been implicated in various scandals and have been the targets of a number of corrupt practices investigations, yet they continue to retain their positions of power.
For more information on other long-serving House members we invite you to check out:
www.wikipedia.org
