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SEIFFE:  Recall and Term Limits

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

By Ralf Seiffe

For the past week or so, I have been traveling out of Illinois and spared the caterwauling of the political class over the spending priorities the State of Illinois should adopt.  Nevertheless, curiosity combined with the magic of the Internet make news of the General Assembly and the Governor available on-line.  It’s like watching a Paris Hilton video--one cannot ignore it, waiting for the next outrage.  So, word that a leading Republican will propose a Constitutional Amendment to adopt Recall--a sort of permanent rehab for politicians that was one of the Progressive Movement cardinal objectives--I was astonished.  Then, when I read that the Governor met those stakes and raised them with term limits, the news from Springfield makes me wonder if I’ll return to the same State I left. 

Both recall and term limits would be empowering to Illinois’ voters at the expense of our career politicians.  Given the self-serving nature of the General Assembly, they stand little chance of success.  Nevertheless, we might learn something from the Progressives who managed to conquer similar public relations impediments.  After all, they convinced the public to establish an income tax and to outlaw beer. 

Recall is not a radical proposal. Those states that do allow citizens to recall their elected officials rarely see the tool used but it does function as a safety valve on out-of-control politicians.  Just ask Gray Davis. 

Of the two proposals, term limits are the more powerful and beneficial to conservatives because they would continually refresh the General Assembly with new faces that would not be professional politicians.  Term limits must be effective because once passed, politicians work hard to undermine them and even those who voluntarily adopt them often change their mind.  Some Class of ’94 Republican House members come to mind. 

To make the term limit proposal even toothier, I would add that anyone serving in any compensated, elected position to be paid exactly the gross income they reported on their income tax forms in the immediately preceding tax year.  This pay would be limited to two terms only.  In that way, if one wanted to become a career politician, even under term limits, it would be a self-funded career. 

The Springfield impasse has exposed the professional political class as impotent and revealed their intellectual sclerosis.  Because Illinois’ pols have spent a century using their energy and our money to extinguish as much of the power voters believe they have, these two remedies are appropriate and timely.  Recall addresses the acute problem while term limits cures the chronic. 

Good government types of all political persuasions should welcome and support these new Constitutional rights because they establish the sorts of checks and balances that are the genius of the federal system.  They strike at the heart of the politicians and the public employee unions that have made public service more remunerative than the private sector.

Conservatives might support a recall and term limits amendment as a risk reducing alternative to a Constitutional Convention.  Some conservatives believe that we can forge an alliance with “honest” liberals at a 2009 convention and fix what’s wrong with Illinois’ governing document.  More likely, I think liberals will recognize that any limits on government threaten their life support system and they will act accordingly.  Add the notion that that tax eaters are much better organized--because their livelihood depends on it--and the Constitutional option appears very dangerous to liberty. 

Instead, these two initiatives could provide most of the benefits a convention might provide but without the uncertainty of a ConCon free-for-all probably populated by same familiar names that cannot pass a budget. 

The probability of these initiatives gaining any traction is fairly low but for it to have any chance of success, advocates must convince Illinois voters that their state government is no longer just an annoyance but that it has become an injustice.  This connection could be made by illustrating how much of one’s taxes fund the pensions legislators, state employees and teachers get and how much younger they qualify and compare them to typical plans in the private sector.

Another useful campaign would show the State’s largesse simply results in more “victims” who expect sympathy and succor from their neighbors.  By positioning these programs as creating dependency--rather than as an expression of altruism--the current system could be shown to be a systematic and unjust method that creates misery for many to comfort a few politicians. 

Perhaps the real value of Senator Cronin’s proposal is to see if conservatives can put aside their differences and rally around these two sound proposals.  In addition, it would be an excellent test of conservatives’ ability to identify and recruit those elusive “honest liberals” who are rumored to believe in good government.  If we cannot coalesce around these two proposals, and succeed in building a larger coalition to change the Illinois Constitution, we will learn that fomenting a Constitutional Convention is a loony idea. 

© 2007 Ralf Seiffe

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.

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