WASHINGTON -- Voters have forced a dramatic turnover in Congress in the past decade, but the change seems only to have heightened their enthusiasm for an uphill legislative battle to guarantee periodic housecleanings.
"You need new faces and fresh ideas," said Florence Everhart, 62, of Pasadena, Md., who supports a drive to set congressional term limits. She was delighted by the Republican landslide in last year's elections.
"So many members in both parties have been there too long," she said during a pause while shopping at Marley Station Mall in northern Anne Arundel County.
Despite such enthusiasm, the Republicans' proposed constitutional amendment to set congressional term limits is the major plank of the House Republicans' "Contract with America" that appears least likely to pass.
Opponents say the amendment is unnecessary, pointing out that more than half the House members who served in 1990 have left through retirement or defeat. In the Senate, where one-third of the 100 senators come up for election every two years, half the current members arrived after 1986.
But the exercise of the voters' authority to hire and fire, which last year forced a party turnover in both houses for the first time in two generations, has apparently not produced confidence among the elector- ate that Congress can change without some mechanism to guarantee it. About three out of four of those questioned last month in a Times-Mirror poll said they support a constitutional amendment to limit congressional tenure.
"Most people aren't able to keep track of what their congressional representatives do," said another Marley Station Mall shopper, Rick Guyton, 36, a Defense Department employee from Severn who also supports term limits. "There's not really a grade or evaluation. People just go into a voting booth, see a name that sounds familiar and vote for them."
Many of the 84 House and Senate Republican freshmen who rode the wave of voter dissatisfaction into office last year -- and are now leading an uphill battle in Congress for term limits -- say they believe they were elected specifically to curtail congressional tenure.
"I would argue [that] the election upheaval came about because of term limits; my opponent called them 'stupid,' " said Rep. Randy Tate, a 29-year-old Washington state Republican.
Like many of his freshman colleagues, Mr. Tate has promised to stay no longer than three terms, whether a legal limit applies or not. "You're supposed to come to Washington, work your heart out, try to do your best and go home," he said.
Voters in all but one of the 23 states where citizens have the power to initiate a referendum have used that device to limits the terms of their congressional representatives. A vote on the issue is scheduled in the 23rd state -- Mississippi -- later this year.
In Maryland and 26 other states, where only the legislature can bring an issue to a statewide referendum, the drive for congressional term limits has been less successful but remains under way.
House Republicans had promised to address within their first 100 days legal challenges to state term-limits laws by those who contend that the terms of federal offices can't be set at the state level. Although the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the first of those challenges this spring, advocates of term limits want a constitutional amendment that would resolve the issue.
But they aren't close to achieving the two-thirds majority required to pass a constitutional amendment. That's because many senior Republicans, as well as most Democrats, don't support it. They grudgingly agreed to include it in the Republican contract last year because the promise was only to allow the issue to come up for a vote.
'A lot of ambivalence'
"It's bad for the country, which depends on its leaders for wisdom, judgment and experience," said Rep. Henry J. Hyde, an 11-term Republican from Illinois who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "I think my colleagues are having a lot of ambivalence."
Republican congressional veterans argue that the task of modern lawmakers can be so complex -- on issues such as health care, finance, science and technology -- that a Congress of newcomers would be dependent on nonelected officials for advice.
"Capitol Hill would be run by lobbyists and Capitol Hill staffers, all of whom are not elected," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who began his fourth six-year term this year.
Despite Mr. Hatch's opposition, the Senate Judiciary Committee has passed a version that would limit members of both the Senate and House to a total of 12 years on Capital Hill -- two six-year terms for senators and six two-year terms for congressmen. The Senate is expected to debate the bill in March.
No action on the matter has yet been taken in the House.
Even self-proclaimed populists such as House Speaker Newt Gingrich have doubts about the term-limits proposal favored by most grass-roots organizations, which would restrict House members to three two-year terms and senators to two six-year terms.
The contract promises a House vote on two proposals: one calling for three two-year terms, and another calling for six
two-year terms.
Mr. Gingrich, who spent 16 years working his way up from the congressional back benches before he engineered the Republican takeover last fall, said recently that three terms would not have given him enough time to accomplish that feat. He favors the 12-year limit.
"If you had leadership in this country with only a six-year learning curve, it's just too short," the speaker said. "As hard as I worked at it, I just didn't get it in the first six years I was here."
But U.S. Term Limits, the grass-roots organization that sparked the national drive to restrict congressional tenure, is vigorously opposed to the 12-year version because it would double the length of time approved by most of the states that have adopted their own laws.
"A learning curve shouldn't have to be years," said Paul Jacob, executive director of U.S. Term Limits, which is running TV ads against four Republican supporters of the 12-year proposal.
This division in Republican ranks over the number of terms has put House Republican freshmen who ran on the issue in such an awkward spot that another potential compromise has begun to pick up steam. Under a proposal by William Kristol, a Republican political consultant, Congress would enact a law allowing states to limit the terms of their congressional representatives.
'Term-limits federalism'
"Statutory term-limits federalism is good policy and good politics, both," Mr. Kristol wrote in a memo to Republican leaders. "It avoids a term-limits train wreck that would be damaging in its own right -- and threatens collateral damage to the rest of our agenda."
But there could be constitutional problems with that approach, critics say, in part because it would allow for a patchwork of term limits that vary from state to state. But the compromise has picked up tentative support from Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Jacob and Senate leaders of the term-limits movement.
"My first choice is a constitutional amendment, but we're short of the 67 votes we need for that," said Sen. Hank Brown, a Colorado Republican. "I think we do have at least 50 votes,
though, to pass a law saying the states have the power to limit terms, and I think that would ultimately lead to a constitutional amendment."
Mr. Brown, who served five terms in the House but is leaving the Senate voluntarily next year after one term, said the recent turnover in Congress is deceptive because it is mostly the junior members who are being replaced, while the senior members of both parties rarely change. "I think for someone to spend a lifetime in Congress is not healthy for the individual or the country," Mr. Brown said.
Accelerating a congressional career may not be healthy either, said Norman Ornstein, a congressional analyst for the American Enterprise Institute.
"Term limits would channel ambitions in the most dangerous way," he said. "There would be a lot more infighting because everybody would be in a hurry to make a splash."
Out in the country, though, such insider arguments don't always wash. Pam Caldwell, a 37-year-old part-time medical technician and mother from Elkridge, said she liked the idea that members of Congress would feel some haste. "If they knew they only had one term, they might work a little harder, instead of putting things off," she said.