Actually, this argument would not be raging if the limit were five terms. Byrd, you see, is in his sixth. That fact, and his theory of representation-as-rapaciousness, is why he is the much-feared and extremely expensive chairman of the mighty Appropriations Committee.
Byrd, 73, has not been in Washington as long as some other legislators. Not as long as Jamie Whitten, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Appropriations Committee. Whitten was elected 33 days before Pearl Harbor. But Byrd has been in the Senate longer than anyone now there who is not Strom Thurmond. Byrd was elected to the Senate in 1958. Before that he was in the House for three terms. Before that he was in West Virginia’s Senate, 1951-53, and before that in the state House of Delegates, 1947-51. So he became a professional legislator 44 years ago, at age 29, and has had no other career. He is good at what he does. But is what he does good for the nation?
Consider his hijacking of the CIA jobs. The consulting firm hired to advise the CIA did not include the West Virginia site among the top 10 sites. Or the top 65. Or the top 200. But suddenly the CIA, tugging its forelock and bowing deeply to Chairman Byrd, asked that the site be included in the final four. And wonder of wonders, it won.
Even if the merits of the site selection case study did not point in one direction-against Byrd-no one could believe that the merits matter much. Some brave legislators are resisting Byrd, a notorious nurser of grudges. But if the CIA jobs are moved (at a cost of at least $1.2 billion), they will join a long parade of pillaged jobs from the IRS, the FBI (2,600 jobs at a $185 million fingerprinting center) and other agencies. For example, West Virginia is taking from downtown Washington the Treasury Department’s–how suitable-Bureau of Public Debt (700 jobs).
Now, it is arguable that the federal government should be dispersed, perhaps by dynamite. But it should not be moved in bits, like so much booty, to feed an overbearing senator’s unslakable appetite for pork.
When Byrd became Appropriations Chairman in 1989 he vowed to slosh $1 billion into West Virginia in his first six years. He did it in less than three. More than half a billion in projects and other funds for Almost Heaven have been squirreled away in appropriations bills this year. Transportation “demonstration projects” are a notorious form of waste–a slush fund for politicians. (Bike paths for Northeast Dade County, Fla., are set to get $2.5 million. The bicycle demonstration transportation project in Macomb County, Mich., costs a mere $1 million.) Nearly half–$182 million–of the $387 million for them in this year’s Senate transportation appropriations bill was for West Virginia. That means $182 million for a state of 1.8 million people and $205 million for the other 250 million Americans.
In 1990 Byrd larded more money for Fish and Wildlife Service operations into West Virginia than the president had sought for that agency for the entire nation. No project is too piddling for him to pass up ($80,000 to plan a boat access at Teays Landing, W.Va.). But why are people in Boise and Harlem and Fort Wayne and Watts and everywhere else being forced to ante up $80 million for a new courthouse in Charleston, W.Va., and $4.5 million to restore a theater in Huntington, W.Va? Why’.? Because Byrd boasts that “I want to be West Virginia’s billion dollar industry,” and he has been in Congress so long he can be.
Byrd rose to his current eminence from conditions of severe poverty, and he represents a poor state, so perhaps some grasping should be forgiven. Some, but not this egregious sort. His career has become a caricature of a particularly crass and cynical theory of representation. The theory is that being elected to Congress can be regarded as being dispatched to Washington on a looting raid for the enrichment of your state or district, and no other ethic need inhibit the feeding frenzy.
Of course “everybody does it.” Always have, always will, to some degree. But differences of degree can become differences of kind. And surely senators would do it less if, say, they were limited to two terms. In six of their twelve years they might think of something–the national interest, perhaps–other than buying votes with the voters’ money.
People who advocate limiting the number of terms that legislators can serve should squarely face this fact of life in legislatures: Not all long careers are great, but almost all great careers have been long. Evidence of this is in the long careers of “the great triumvirate” of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster; in the 20th century careers of Robert Taft and Henry Jackson; in the careers today of New York’s Pat Moynihan and Missouri’s John Danforth, both of whom are in their third terms.
So at the core of the argument about term limits is this conundrum: Is the cost of truncating the careers of great legislators less than the cost of not truncating the careers of the substantial majority of legislators who never were great and who become more injurious the longer they stay in power, concentrating only on clinging to power? I have come, reluctantly but emphatically, to the conclusion that the losses entailed by term limits are less important–a lot less–than the gains.
