We have great news, in Oklahoma, the State Senate overwhelmingly passed Congressional Term Limits Resolution 1032 by a vote of 31 to 11. Oklahoma is a huge victory for US term limits and for to 82% of the public who support the mandate of Congress. limits State Sen. Michael Bergstrom, Oklahoma co-sponsor, said that with the passage of this resolution, Oklahoma better take the lead in bringing term limits to the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate , the vast majority of Oklahomans support term limits, so the entrenched incumbents can be sent packing. Hello, my name is Holly Robichaud and this is a breaking news story with deadline limits.
Special thanks to State Representative Jon Echols and State Senator Micheal Bergstrom for making it happen in Oklahoma. According to a recent RMG poll in Oklahoma, 73% of likely voters support term limits in Congress. We hope that other states will follow Oklahoma’s lead and join the effort to bypass Congress for congressional term limits. Now it’s time for our DC update. So what’s going on in Washington? Momentum continues to build for our HJRes.11, sponsored by Representative Roth Norman of South Carolina. The resolution known as the US Term Limits Amendment now has 97 cosponsors, and counting… We’re close to 100. Will we do it next week? You will have to be careful. Joining as co-sponsors this week are Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, Rep. Andrew Ogles of Tennessee, Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee, and Monica De La Cruz of Texas. We are on the way to 100 co-sponsors. And as you know, it’s bipartisan support. Democratic Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Jared Golden of Maine, Greg Landsman of Ohio, and Eric Sorensen of Illinois are all co-sponsors and we’re happy to have them on board. I often mention that we have HJres.11 in Congress, but we also have a companion bill, a resolution introduced by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, which is SJRes.2.
We thank Senator Cruz for his efforts in the United States Senate. As you know, we’re working in the States to bypass Congress to get term limits, so a lot of people have been asking, if we get all these resolutions passed in the state, how does their work work? Much of the media and special interest groups are working over time to discredit term limits and our sponsors by saying they have served longer than the US term limits amendment calls for. So let me tell you how it works. If approved by Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states, what would happen is that representatives would be limited to three terms or six years, and senators to two terms or 12 years. It is not designed to be retroactive, only coming into force once ratified by the required three-fourths of the states. Only then would we get term limits for all members of Congress. And now it’s time for the corrupt politician of the week. This week, Georgia Representative Austin Scott makes our list. Austin Scott was first elected to Congress in 2010. As you can imagine, he is no friend of term limits and is not a co-sponsor of our HJRes.11.
Scott has been a successful stock trader while serving in Congress, he bought a thousand shares of FuelCell Energy at $2 a share in October 2020, then sold some of those shares in December 2020 at of $13.42 a share. This represents an increase of 571%. He sold the remaining shares in January 2021 at a price of $7.60 per share. This is a 780% increase. Pretty good. The website, Unusual Whales follows Congressional stock trading and has created a page on Scott’s stock trades. He has also been cited for being late in reporting transactions his wife has made. Serving in Congress is serving the people, not getting rich. That’s why we need term limits, don’t you agree? Did you know that Term Limits USA is the nation’s largest partisan term limits advocacy group? We connect supporters of term limits with their legislators. We work to pass term limits at all levels of government, especially Congress.
In a follow-up story about California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 89. He has been out of the Senate for more than a month due to health problems. Now, because of his absence, work on the Senate Judiciary Committee is effectively at a standstill until he returns to the Senate or resigns his seat. Senator Feinstein was first elected in 1992 and has two years left on her term. Major media outlets like Politico are reporting that he may never return to the Senate, but he will not resign and remain in office, which will mean that work on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and indeed the Senate itself, could be on hold for two years . . We wish Senator Feinstein a speedy recovery, but history shows why we need term limits.
Now is the time for the US update. Oklahoma, as I mentioned at the beginning of the program, has passed its resolution. Oklahoma now joins Florida, Alabama, Missouri, West Virginia and Wisconsin in calling for term limits in Congress. In Maine, legislation has been introduced in both the State House and State Senate, and we look forward to its progress. In North Dakota, state legislatures were defeated in their attempt to roll back recently passed term limits for state legislators and the governor. It was defeated, 41 to 5. This was an unconstitutional power grab attempt by a few legislators to override the will of the voters of North Dakota. Last November, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that established term limits for state lawmakers and the governor. We would like to commend Jared Hendrix of North Dakota for the term limits to prevent this from happening. Good job.
Tired of politicians not listening? Let’s make congressional term limits a reality. We need your help, so please get involved today by going to termlimits.org and signing up to volunteer. We have a lot of activities and we need your help and be sure to share this show with your friends every week. This is Holly Robichaud for breaking news on US term limits. I’ll get back to you next week.
