Should President Obama Be Our President For Life?
By WhatsHerName
@PrarieStyle (2486)
United States
June 14, 2009 2:44pm CST
There's a new bill in the House...
HJ 5 IH
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. J. RES. 5
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 6, 2009
Mr. SERRANO introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
JOINT RESOLUTION
[b]Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.
[/b]
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:‘Article--
‘The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.’.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hj111-5
Do you think ANY United States president should ever be made permanent?
Watch for this to be rushed through as pork in a million page bill...
Happy Flag Day!
Happy Flag Day!8 people like this
25 responses
@piasabird (1737)
• United States
14 Jun 09
Well now if he can just make himself president for life he'll be a true dictator.
I don't think he should be president at all. Not until he proves without a shadow of doubt that he is a natural born citizen like our Constitution requires.
4 people like this
@maryaizatugbo (12)
• Philippines
15 Jun 09
i guess it's too early to judge if he should stay in power or not. The mess that he will start to clean is not that easy after all. Let's have faith on what he can do first. Just a little trust on his strength at these times might be helpful.
1 person likes this
@piasabird (1737)
• United States
15 Jun 09
I haven't got a lot of faith in Obama or the Democrats. If they hadn't forced banks into handing out so many bad loans the housing market wouldn't have collapsed.
People have the missconception that because we had a Republican president in office when all of this started happening that it's his fault but don't forget that there was a Democratic majority in congress.
1 person likes this
@GardenGerty (160665)
• United States
14 Jun 09
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. No president should be president for life. I hope you are wrong about it getting rushed straight through.
2 people like this
@PrarieStyle (2486)
• United States
14 Jun 09
I hope I'm wrong too. We wouldn't know until it was announced the next day.
1 person likes this
@gewcew23 (8007)
• United States
17 Jun 09
A to the title of your discussion NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Term limits are a good thing because it does force an elected official to live under the laws they enacted, which is why members of Congress should be term limited as the President is too.
1 person likes this
@PrarieStyle (2486)
• United States
21 Jun 09
Otherwise you end up with a Supreme Ruler like Iran has right now...
@miamilady (4910)
• United States
14 Jun 09
Two things.
One - I didn't see it talking about eliminating elections every four years, so it doesn't necessarily mean anybody would be President "for life".
Two - Despite my previous comment, I hope it doesn't go through. It potentially could be a step in the wrong direction.
1 person likes this
@matersfish (6306)
• United States
15 Jun 09
My comment was going to be, "It doesn't say anything about stopping the election process, so whomever 'thinks' they can be dictator for life will have to stay popular -- something extremely hard to do with America's bunch of jaded, what-have-you-done-for-ME-lately citizens." ... So, I'll just piggyback your comment. :-)
Although I'm really fairly positive that Obama would NOT be elected to serve more than two terms (I don't even think he'll be reelected), I'm still fearful.
Hypothetically, if this passed through and the Constitution was ammended, what's to stop them from going further? If they do this, it means one thing: They want Barack in for life. So, what's to then stop them from rushing through various loopholes in the voting process?
This is a government, let us not forget, that would gladly NOT count votes if the people wanted something different than the elitists. And that goes for Republican and Democrat!
I'm very fearful of this. Before we know it, this will be passed and California will have 150 Electoral votes! (now those "crazies" who said liberals only wanted illegals to be citizens so they could vote don't sound so "crazy," do they! lmao)
I'm also just plain sad. :(
What's so incredibly wrong with America that this particular administration has tried to drastically change it? What, a financial crisis? Jeez. It's not like they don't happen! What gives them the right to play us like this? Even diehard liberals should be mad. It's their America too. The government is only acting in interest of the government.
1 person likes this
@coolcoder (2018)
• United States
14 Jun 09
I was afraid something like this would come up. No, absolutely not...Obama should definitely not be president for life. In five months, he's already started messing up this country--can you imagine what he'll have done at the end of his first term?
The next thing that's probably going to go is the election process itself. People won't have a chance to vote for president anymore. That is scare to think about.
1 person likes this
@ra1787 (501)
• Italy
14 Jun 09
i really doubt that someone could win more than 2 elections on a row, but anyway given the huge powers of the president of the usa, it is better to avoid having the same person for too much time, so this bill seems wrong to me. power corrupts anyone in the long term.
1 person likes this
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
30 Jun 09
FDR was elected to four terms. It was during a depression and then WWII. All they'd need to do is declare martial law and to do that they'd have to manufacture a huge crisis....I don't doubt they have one in the works already.
@rogue13xmen13 (14403)
• United States
15 Jun 09
No. The four-year term, two term presidency was created for a reason, so that a president would not die in office and re-elected over and over again. That is the way it should be and that is the way it shall stay.
1 person likes this
@usaction (649)
• United States
24 Jun 09
I don't think ANY polictian should be allowed a limitless term. I think a lot of our senators and congressmen shouldn't be in more than a 2 or 3 terms! Imagine how much worse the country would be, if Bush was STILL president! $10BILLION/month to Iraq! $250 BILLION, that went out, with no accountability, transparancy, or anything, whatsoever! Bush ran around like a madman, ignoring the checks and balances, doing whatever he wanted, without a care! Oh, and let's not forget things like the illegal wire-tapping! THAT is pretty communistic or dictorial of him!
@Kowgirl (3490)
• United States
15 Jun 09
I hope you people aren't taking this seriously. This is not from any official government site.
GovTrack.us is not affiliated with the U.S. government or any other group. It is a pet project of a regular joe. (More About GovTrack) / Feedback (but not political opining) is welcome to operations@govtrack.us, but I can't do your research for you, nor can I pass on messages to Members of Congress. This site is "copyleft": You are encouraged to reuse any material on this site. Developers: GovTrack is open source and supports open knowledge.
@PrarieStyle (2486)
• United States
11 Apr 16
@CoralLevang This is from 2009. Some people like to troll around leaving insults on old topics.
@twoey68 (13627)
• United States
14 Jun 09
It's rather scary to think of this going through...too many ppl dislike different presidents...and no, not just 0bama. Alot of ppl disliked Bush but under this new amendment he could have continued to run and be President. I think two terms is plenty and really think they should only get one if they are doing a crappy job as President...that might make them do a better job.
[b]~~AT PEACE WITHIN~~
**STAND STRONG IN YOUR BELIEFS**[/b]
1 person likes this
@clrumfelt (5490)
• United States
27 Jun 09
The USA should not have a president serve for more that 2 terms. The possibility of "president for life" came up after Franklin Roosevelt serced 4 terms and people wanted to change it to avoid the rise of a dictatorship. Hopefully the law will be seen as a wise move and they will keep the two-term limit.
@connierebel (1557)
• United States
17 Jun 09
I figured Obama would try to keep his hold on America once he got in. I hope this doesn't pass, we'll be in a worse mess than we already are if it does. Its bad enough to have that dictator in there for four years; we certainly don't want him in for life.
@kprofgames (3091)
• United States
14 Jun 09
No that isn't right. There is a limit for a reason. Even if elections are held, there is still too many broken promises that come out of them. All these changes. Yeah, not good.
1 person likes this
@pbrockington (500)
• United States
14 Jun 09
I think that it takes long then four years to have a positive impact on the US. So if he was allowed 12 years in office we may be over all in better shape.
@Destiny007 (5805)
• United States
15 Jun 09
An amendment cannot be snuck through in an appropriations bill. It has to be voted on by itself and approved by a 2/3rds majority of the states.
This would not be a good thing... 8 years is plenty of te for a president.
These people who want to make 0bozo dictator for life would not have approved of Bush being in for another term,so they really should consider that aspect.
I think ALL terms should be limited... it would sure cut down on the corruption in politics.
@stephcjh (38473)
• United States
15 Jun 09
I do not think any of them should have a permanent position. They may not do a very good job and they should not be able to stay in there if they don't. they may make things worse also and should not be able to stay and continue to do so.
@sid556 (30960)
• United States
15 Jun 09
This is nothing and I kind of agree with it. Why not? If we have a president that we like and he is willing to run for an extra term...why should we not be able to vote him in? It won't be for life for sure and he would have to be voted in so why not? most of the presidents that we've had are so old by the end of their term that they would not want to run again anyway or we wouldn't want them to anyway. There is no way that any president will ever be made permanent but we should be able to keep him/her as long as we like and as long as they are willing to do the job.
@lvaldean (1612)
• United States
15 Jun 09
This isn't about Obama it is about just plain stupid. Some version of this Bill gets floated periodically and it always gets tossed, as it should. There is a reason for term limits on within the Executive Branch. These same reasons should apply to all branches of government, instead of trying to extend the executive terms they should be limiting legislative terms.
@tundeemma (894)
• South Africa
15 Jun 09
that is quite funny, Obama cannot be the president for live because he cannot be the best president america will have, it will be better to change and rotate people so that what Obama has left to do another person can continue from there, nobody can handle all the situations of the country alone so he cannot be a president for life
