Before President Franklin D.
Roosevelt was elected to his third and fourth terms in office, U.S. presidents
had honored the limit established by George Washington that a president should
serve no more than two terms.
Later, the 22nd Amendment formally
restricted service in the Oval Office to two terms.
But now, U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano,
D-N.Y., and a supporter of President Obama, has introduced House Joint
Resolution 15 to repeal the 22nd Amendment and thus abolish presidential term
limits.
Serrano has introduced the bill
before, in 2003, 2009 and 2011 with no success. H.J.R. 15 would require a
two-thirds majority vote in favor in both the House and Senate and a majority
of support from state legislatures.
With the debate over the fiscal
cliff dominating most of the discussion on Capitol Hill of late, the
legislation has managed to slip under the radar. It was introduced on Jan. 4
and immediately referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Washington declined to run for a third term,
despite his wide popularity. Thomas Jefferson later foreshadowed the need for a
formal limit when, in 1805, he wrote to John Taylor that he would follow Washington’s example.
Two years later he warned that
without term limits, U.S.
presidents would become like kings, which the colonists had fought a bloody war
to escape. “If some termination to the services of the chief magistrate be not
fixed by the Constitution or supplied in practice,” Jefferson wrote to the
Vermont Legislature, “his office, nominally for years, will in fact become for
life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance.”
Formal limits were established
March 21, 1947, when Congress passed the 22nd Amendment. By Feb. 26, 1951, the
amendment was ratified by the required number of states and was added to the
Constitution.
The 22nd Amendment states, “No
person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, and no
person who has held the office of president, or acted as president, for more
than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall
be elected to the office of the president more than once.”
Serrano’s bill currently has no
co-sponsors.
It states, “Proposing an amendment
to the Constitution of the United
States to repeal the twenty-second article
of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an
individual may serve as president.”
It continues: “Resolved by the
Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following
article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States,
which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution
when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within
seven years after the date of its submission for ratification.”
WND reported four years ago when
Obama was preparing for his 2009 inauguration gala, the same plan was before
the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. At that time, Serrano’s bill was
H.J.R. 5, which proposed “an amendment to the Constitution of the United States
to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the
limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as president.”
Eisenhower, Clinton and Reagan all
were critical of the amendment at times.
The amendment limits presidents to
a maximum of eight years in office or, under unusual circumstances, such as
succession following the death of a president, a maximum of 10 years in office.
Should Serrano succeed in repealing the amendment, Obama would be cleared to
run for an unlimited number of terms, restricted only by the vote of the
electorate.
To achieve repeal of the 22nd
Amendment, Serrano’s proposal must be approved by a two-thirds vote of both
houses of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states’ legislatures.
“Gen. Washington
set the example of voluntary retirement after eight years,” Jefferson
wrote in an 1805 letter to John Taylor. “I shall follow it, and a few more
precedents will oppose the obstacle of habit to anyone after a while who shall
endeavor to extend his term. Perhaps it may beget a disposition to establish it
by an amendment of the Constitution.”
In the same letter to the Vermont
Legislature in which he warned of a presidential monarchy, Jefferson further
explained why he refused to run for a third term.
“Believing that a representative
government, responsible at short periods of election, is that which produces
the greatest sum of happiness to mankind,” Jefferson wrote, “I feel it a duty
to do no act which shall essentially impair that principle; and I should
unwillingly be the person who, disregarding the sound precedent set by an
illustrious predecessor, should furnish the first example of prolongation
beyond the second term of office.”
About the Author:
Phil M. Petre is a successful Entrepreneur & Businessman who has worked from home for years! He and his wife Brenda home school their 7 kids while living in beautiful rural Oklahoma! To find out more about their business and how to participate CLICK HERE.
To contact Phil email him at PhilPetre@gmail.com
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