Our Constitution sets out the terms for both senators and representatives. But these were laid out in an era when campaign financing was insignificant and a mistrustful nation felt representatives should run every two years. But times have changed. Campaign funding, at all levels, is big business. For those who are members of the house, they get elected and almost immediately must think of getting re-elected. That is because they have to find the funds to be able to run ads for their next term and to pay for other re-election expenses. This necessarily takes away from their ability to serve their constituency as well as they could.

The solution is to change their term from 2-year to 4-year terms. This would require an Constitutional amendment but it should not be that difficult. By increasing the term to 4 years, representatives would be able to serve their constituents better.

The change would happen as a representative came up for re-election. It would take six years to cycle through every representative but in the end, you would still have elections every two years, 1/3 of the house vying for re-election, as presently happens.

Secondly, both the house and senate should be allowed to serve a total of 18 years in either the house or senate. That means someone could serve in the house for 18 years and then continue in the senate for another 18 years, 36 years total. And by not allow any present member to be grandfathered, meaning they would immediately fall under this rule, a total of 18 senators, mostly democrats, would be required to retire when their present term ends.