Lawmakers Introduce Amendment on Congressional Term Limits
Under the proposal put forth by Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Ralph Norman, members of the House would be barred from running for office after their third term, while senators would be limited to two terms.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Representative Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) have jointly introduced resolutions in both the Senate and the House, advocating for term limits for Congress.
“Given the apparent power abuse in Congress, the implementation of term limits is simply common sense,” Norman stated in an email.
Notably, terms that start before the amendment is ratified will not count towards this limit, which is significant for Cruz as he began his third Senate term this year.
“The Founding Fathers envisioned a government made up of citizen legislators who would serve a few years and then return home, rather than a system dominated by a small cadre of special interests and long-serving politicians who exploit Washington’s dysfunction to govern in ways that lack accountability to the American populace,” Cruz remarked.
This initiative has garnered support from both chambers of Congress—11 senators and 29 House members—but amending the U.S. Constitution is a challenging process.
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To be ratified, the amendment requires the backing of two-thirds of both the House and Senate, along with the approval of three-fourths of the states.
Cruz and Norman have long championed the idea of term limits throughout their congressional careers.
Similarly, Norman’s House version faced defeat with a 17–19 vote in the House Judiciary Committee that same year.
The opposition was not solely partisan.
Four Republican representatives—Harriet Hageman (Wyo.), Darrell Issa (Calif.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), and Scott Fitzgerald (Wis.)—joined Democrats in dismissing the bill.
At the time, Hageman expressed to Fox News that she believed imposing term limits would remove voter choice.
“We already have term limits, though we refer to them as elections, and in the House, we have those every two years,” she stated.
“One only needs to look at my own seat, which I currently hold for the people of Wyoming, to see that if voters are unhappy, they can always make a change.”
She also indicated that experience from long-serving members could be crucial in political confrontations with the opposition.
The record for the longest-serving member of Congress belongs to Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who spent 59 years in the House of Representatives. Current Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have maintained their seats for decades, with Grassley first elected in 1980 and McConnell in 1985.
McConnell concluded his tenure as the leader of Senate Republicans at the end of 2024 and has yet to rule out a potential run in 2026.
