You say you want term limits? For whom?
We already have those for elected officials. They’re called elections.
Every couple of years we have the opportunity to fire every last one of our elected officials. Most of the time, voters choose to keep the ones they have.
In 2023 Tate County voters chose to fire four of the five county supervisors. To me, that seems to be a very real example of term limits in action.
In the past few days incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced that Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, recently elected to his third full term, will be appointed to chair the Senate Armed Forces Committee, and will serve on the Senate Commerce, Environment and Public Works, and Rules committees. If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that Wicker ran the hearings for Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth. The Rules committee decides how things get done in the Senate. We could have fired Wicker in November.
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith will join Wicker on the Rules committee, and will serve on Appropriations, Agriculture, and Energy committees. She was recently considered for Secretary of Agriculture. We can fire her in 2026 if we want to.
Representative Trent Kelly serves on the House Armed Services Committee. His subcommittees include several dealing with intelligence. He’s also a member of the House Agriculture Committee. We can fire him in 2026.
One the state level, returning state senator Neil Whaley will chair the influential Local and Private Committee, as well as serving on 8 other Senate committees. Local and Private handles bills that pertain to a single town or county. Think of it as earmark central.
Being chair of Local and Private is kind of a big deal.
Representative Trey Lamar is chair of the Mississippi House Ways and Means Committee. That makes him one of the gatekeepers for all legislation regarding state spending and revenue.
Cedric Burnett, whose house district includes parts of Tunica, Coahoma, Quitman, and Tate Counties, joins Lamar on the Ways and Means committee and is a member of the House Gaming committee. Despite being a Democrat in a Republican controlled House, Burnett chairs the Interstate Cooperation Committee.
We have the option to limit the terms of Burnett, Lamar, and Whaley in 2027.
Wicker, Hyde-Smith, Kelly, Whaley, Lamar, Burnett got those appointments and the perks and influence that come with them through seniority. They worked their way up the ladder, learning which steps to take and which to avoid, over the years.
Remember, you have the option to fire any of them every few years.
And then there are the folks who make the rules and carry out the laws Congress and the Legislature pass.
The folks who serve in career civil service jobs.
These are the folks at the IRS, EPA, OSHA, DOJ, DOE, USACE, CIA, FBI, BATFE, CMS, USDA, NIH, CDC, and who knows how many other alphabet soup agencies who handle the details of how government impacts our lives. With very few exception, once hired these federal employees can spend the rest of their lives interpreting what Congress and the President intend when a law is passed.
These are the folks who make rules governing how schools operate and what hard hat is required for which job. They decide how much of what preservative goes into a loaf of bread and whether or not a medicine can go on the market. They decide how many hours a truck driver can stay behind the wheel.
They’re the folks who took 87 years to say it’s OK to build pumps to alleviate the flooding that puts parts of the Delta under water every spring.
The only checks on their power are the actions of our elected officials.
You don’t have the option to fire them. Under current law, it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to fire them.
I’d rather have the option to keep or fire my elected representatives than to take my chances with a bunch of unfireable bureaucrats hired by like-minded bureaucrats.
