Donald Trump Proposes Term Limits for Congress

One day after he unveiled a new ethics plan, Donald Trump added one more potential reform to his wish list: A Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.

“If I’m elected president, I will push for a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Tuesday afternoon, to sustained cheers from the crowd. “Right? They’ve been talking about that for years.”

Trump’s campaign elaborated on the proposal in a press release emailed during the speech.

“Decades of failure in Washington, and decades of special interest dealing, must come to an end,” it says. “We have to break the cycle of corruption, and we have to give new voices a chance to go into government service. The time for Congressional term limits has arrived.”

His campaign proposed a six-year limit for the House and a 12-year cap for the Senate.

Trump is correct that Republicans have been kicking this idea around for years. It traces back to the “Contract With America” that congressional Republicans proposed in 1994, which included a measure that would have imposed a maximum term of 12 years for both senators and members of the House. The measure failed; it didn’t win two thirds of both the House and Senate required for passage.

Newt Gingrich was House Speaker at the time and pushed for the term limit amendment, and he’s now a close adviser to Trump. Under the Constitution, the president plays no formal role in approving constitutional amendments.