Washington rewards failure. It’s time to send career politicians home

Washington, D.C., is broken. I don't think that's a controversial statement anymore. Eighty-three percent of Americans support term limits on Congress — and even more Alaskans do — and approval of Congress sits at around 12%. People aren't wrong to feel that way.

I say this as someone who's been there. I went to Congress to carry on the legacy of my Republican predecessor, Don Young, who spent decades putting Alaska first by working across the aisle and delivering real results. What I found was different: a place more focused on staying in power than getting things done, on trading stocks than passing laws, on keeping donors happy than keeping constituents afloat.

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Congress has become a performance. And working people are paying for it.

Corruption dominates. Our officials trade stocks while having access to insider information. They take meetings with the special interests bleeding working people dry. And while they're cashing in, their constituents are facing skyrocketing prices.

I see it everywhere I go in Alaska. This used to be a place of abundance. Now, in every city, town and village, I hear the same thing: groceries and gas are through the roof, buying a home feels impossible, and people are choosing between heating their houses and putting food on the table. That's not a red problem or a blue problem. That's what happens when the people making decisions in Washington have stopped feeling the consequences of those decisions.

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The reason immigration hasn't been fixed in decades isn't that it's too hard for us to wrap our heads around. It's that the system rewards politicians for fighting about it, not solving it. The same goes for the cost of living, drug prices, housing — you name it. Career politicians have every incentive to keep the fight going and no real deadline to deliver.

That's the problem term limits fix.

I'm calling for 12-year term limits on Congress. To those who serve in the House of Representatives or the Senate, if you can't get something worthwhile done in 12 years, it's time to go home. This isn't radical. It's accountability. The kind every working person in this country already lives with.

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The only people who don't support term limits are the ones who benefit from not having them. The career politicians who've turned public service into a career advancement strategy. The committee chairs who've been in Washington so long their biggest donors are the industries they're supposed to regulate. The members who go to Washington and come home three times richer than when they left.

My time in Congress made it crystal clear to me that the system is rigged. Most members of Congress aren't there to deliver; they're there to stay in office and get rich along the way. The result is exactly what you'd expect: partisan gridlock, institutional rot, and corrupt policies engineered to benefit the same powerful special interests that fund the machine.

You can't fix the cost of living without first fixing the people in charge of fixing it.

I've called on Alaska to lead by passing term limits at the state level to open a legal pathway through the courts. As Alaska's next senator, I'll fight to pass them federally. Alaska has led the country before on government reform. We can do it again.

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Term limits won't solve everything. But they will force Congress to work on our timeline, not theirs. They'll replace career politicians beholden to donors with representatives who actually have to deliver, because they know the clock is running. And they will help ensure that the voices of hardworking Americans are heard at the highest levels of government, not the voices of wealthy elites.

Working people across this country can't afford more of the same. We need a system that works for them, not career politicians and the shady special interests who keep them in their seats.

Red or blue, we all benefit from a Congress that has a deadline.