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Should House of Representative terms be extended?

Members of the House only serve for 2 years, which many say makes them focus more on elections/reelections than on actually serving. Do you agree? Would extending their terms to 4 or even 6 years fix this problem, or make them more focused on winning instead?

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Answer #1

Also, the founding fathers set the lengths of terms very well

Representatives: 2 years Presidents: 4 years Senators: 6 years

That’s fantastic because it allows the electorate to turn over each branch and lead to checks and balances of each other.

Now we have checks and balances. For 6 years we did not, hence there was no checks on the power of the executive branch, and no oversight responsibility since one party controlled every branch of government.

This is similar to the days of Clinton when there were at various times a mixture of democratic and republican control of the house and senate, so there was a check on Clinton.

Answer #2

Hi sizzlin31986,

I’ve often though that it would help– I have a degree in Political Science, and one of the first things I learned was that once an elected official is elected, he/she starts putting together his re-election campaign!

However, to change something that deep seeded in tradition, it would be really hard. Also, since the people who would vote to change it probably want to keep their short terms.

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