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

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?