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Establish 6-year term limit for members of Congress

As a first-time visitor to Maui, I picked up the Jan. 12 edition of The Maui News and read your terrific editorial, “The Congress that we need,” with great interest. The prolific gerrymandering by state legislatures (it is they who draw and approve congressional districts) has led to the professionalism of the U.S. House in particular. Thomas Jefferson warned the founding fathers that, absent term limits, this is what may eventually happen.

For the first 100 years, the Congress was rotational because the bankers, lawyers and farmers who served generally returned to their jobs out of necessity after one or two terms. Around the end of the 19th century, professional politicians began to emerge.

What your editorial did not cover is the enormous cost of running for Congress (the recent special election in Georgia surpassed $55 million). For this and many other reasons, let me encourage the citizens of Hawaii to join fellow Americans in establishing one six-year term for members of the House, Senate and the president.

Congress is not going to vote themselves a mandatory retirement plan so it will require a constitutional convention.

If we begin now, we can meet in Philadelphia on July 4, 2018, to hammer out the details, just as Thomas Jefferson would have liked.

Donald J. Weinbach

North Salem, N.Y.

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