A plethora of exciting things happened in favor of the term limits movement this year — it’s time to count down the top 5 successes in 2023!
#5. New national polling in favor of term limits has hit an all-time high for — a whopping 87% of Americans favor term limits on Congress. Not surprisingly, the public congressional approval rating has simultaneously plummeted to an alarming low of just 13%. Support for term limits is broad and strong across all political, geographic and demographic groups., proving term limits is the great unifier. The surge in favor of term limits is palpable — everyone supports them but the most entrenched career politicians.
#4. Nick Tomboulides was invited to testify before the house Judiciary committee on September 19th. His testimony quickly became a truth-telling, fact-dropping exhibition! During his remarks, Nick skillfully directed the committee members’ attention to the fact that 83% (now 87%) of the public want term limits for government officials, which is no surprise given the incumbency reelection rates are at or just below 100% in both chambers.
#3. North Carolina and Tennessee both passed our term limits resolution in their respective houses. This positions us to pass both states in 2024. Add Indiana and Louisiana as states to watch, among others, that have a high percentages of term limits champions seated in both chambers of the legislature.
#2. Oklahoma became the sixth state legislature to pass a term limits convention joint resolution. This informs Congress that the ‘Sooner State’ is now on record as one of the states needed to trigger the national convention to propose a congressional term limits amendment.
#1. For the first time in decades, our term limits resolution had a vote in the House Judiciary Committee. House Joint Resolution 11, proposes a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms members of Congress may serve. We nearly passed. Had three of our pledge signers been present, we would have won by two votes and our resolution would have gone to a vote of the full House.
In 2023, there were 136 term limits pledge signers in Congress, from both sides of the aisle, including the 56th Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana’s 4th Congressional district. In 2016, Johnson signed the USTL pledge promising to cosponsor and vote in favor of our specific term limits resolution. This is the first time in history that we have a pro-term limits pledge signer as House Speaker.
While we didn’t get the vote on the House floor, we did have substantial accomplishments that position us well for 2024.