Did Congressional Candidates Tommy Sowers and Larry Bill Find Common Ground?

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User-submitted story by Committee to Elect Lawrence David Bill for Congress

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Larry Bill claims to agree with opponent Tommy Sowers on a basic change to the U.S Constitution: term limits for federal Congressmen.

Sowers had an article in the Huffington Post Blog and Southeast Missourian newspaper suggesting term limits can be one way to stop Congressional gridlock.

Sowers wrote: "This is why I support a primary treatment--term limits for Congress. Incumbents will say the ballot box serves as a term limit, plausible only if evidence could support this claim. Yet despite decades of abysmal approval numbers under 20%, we see Congress re-elected 95% of the time.

Only a Constitutional amendment would cure the cancer of incumbency."

On Bill's website, one of his planks specifically cites term limits as a partial solution to limit the influence of lobbyists and campaign contributors:

"Our founders were opposed to monarchy, but a flaw in our Constitution (lack of term limits for Congressmen) has resulted in an aristocracy of ineffective incumbents supported by political action groups and lobbyist contributions. Essentially, incumbent Congressmen use these campaign contributions to eliminate any opposition back home with media saturation. Once re-elected, they return the favor by backing legislation favoring special interests through pork-barrel projects and tax code manipulation. Forcing representatives out of office gives others the chance to serve for the benefit of their districts, not lobbyists."

Bill specifically wants to limit representatives to 8 years and senators to 12 years. Bill has, on multiple occasions, promised to limit himself to 6 years.

Bill went on to say that this may be the last term for any Congressman from the 8th District. "Because of the failure of our representative to stop illegal immigration, after the census is finished, Missouri will probably lose our Congressional seat to a western state where the illegals will be counted."

Bill actually addressed this term limit issue during a speech given last April 15. Visit this link:

http://larrybill.com/mr-bills-tea-party-speeches/

The question we all should ask is, can we trust either of these two to avoid the appeal of power and turn themselves out when they promised to?

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Ahhhh look, challengers for term limits. Of course, you both would have to get elected to actually follow through on your promises. And that isn't going to happen.

-- Posted by northside8 on Wed, Mar 3, 2010, at 6:59 AM
How many promises made during an election campaign are actually kept, after all? Just look at the folks currently in office and compare their promises with their performance to answer that question!

(We ARE in desperate need of term limits for those elected to Congress. These idiots will never vote themselves out of a job, though. Who will protect us from these people? Now THAT would make a good campaign promise!)

-- Posted by Rocket_Surgeon on Wed, Mar 3, 2010, at 7:46 AM
more common ground between Larry Bill and Tommy Sowers....both are going to lose, by wide margins.

-- Posted by cjb2m5 on Wed, Mar 3, 2010, at 8:45 AM
Term limits. That's how we got Speaker Jetton. We have term limits now. Its called an election.

-- Posted by VIKED on Wed, Mar 3, 2010, at 10:08 AM
Semoguy85,

If you review the Federal Election Commission reports, you will see that only my wife and I have contributed to our campaign. We have turned away offered contributions to avoid undue influence on my decisions. We will continue this policy until the petition campaign is over.

If I do end up on the ballot, we may then decide to take contributions since I will be a viable threat.

I don't see attempting to stop the bankrupting of our country as a waste of my time. We have this policy (no campaign contributions during petition phase) simply to avoid wasting other peoples' money.

Visit: http://larrybill.com/contribute-but-dont-send-money-see-detials/

Thanks,

Larry Bill, Independent Conservative Candidate, 8th Disrict, Missouri

-- Posted by nolimitsonthought on Wed, Mar 3, 2010, at 10:54 AM
Mr. Bill - I know you mentioned you flew jets. I would like to know your thoughts on chemtrails. I am very concerned that you might have cooperated with the US government and sprayed mind controlling chemicals into the atmosphere. Also, do you think Obama is an American? I am very interested if you saw any UFO's while you were flying around too.

-- Posted by Mr Goodtime on Wed, Mar 3, 2010, at 9:34 PM
I'm noticing that these arguments are happening between the same five people...must be in my head.

On topic, it's not worth arguing about popularity and such, as Emerson has never had a credible challenger since she first ran in '96. This is going to be an interesting election.

-- Posted by poplarproud72 on Wed, Mar 3, 2010, at 10:30 PM
This election cycle will be very different than we have seen in many years. Third party candidates are certainly viable. Even when a candidate does not win, his or her ideas often influence the people who do win. I would consider it a victory if Larry forced Ms. Emerson to become more conservative in the process of trying to be re-elected. She tows the party line as it is now. Sometimes the party line is conservative, and sometimes it is not. This gets her the support of her party and plenty of money but it may not be the best thing for our district. I prefer a free thinker like Larry Bill who is in this thing because he is concerned for our district and our country and wants to change things for the better.

-- Posted by jcwill on Thu, Mar 4, 2010, at 11:35 AM

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