Yet Another Argument For Term Limits

The Detroit News: Dingell will file today for 30th term

U.S. Rep. John Dingell will file petitions today seeking re-election to a record 30th term in Congress.

The Dearborn Democrat, who said his work is unfinished, will hold kickoff events in Trenton and Ann Arbor. If re-elected, Dingell would become the longest-serving member of Congress in June 2013, surpassing former Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who died in 2010.

Dingell, 85, became the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives in February 2009. He was first elected to fill his late father's Detroit seat in 1955. "It's not how long you serve, it's how well you serve," he said.

30 Terms? That will be 60 years in the House of Representatives - far longer than I've been alive and indeed longer than the median age of the population of the State of Michigan, which is 35.5 years. He's been in Congress since longer than half of the population of this state has been alive.

When Dingell first entered Congress in 1955 the Minimum Wage was 75 cents an hour, Eisenhower was president, it only cost 3 cents to mail a first class letter, and the Brooklyn Dodgers had beat the Yankees in the World Series.

Yeah, that's how long he's been in Congress.

I understand he wants to beat Robert Byrd's service record, but it is getting riddiculous.

Dingell, even as a liberal Democrat with a bent towards nationalizing health care and a push for big government is not the worst Democrat in office by far (generally his support for and from the automotive industry is keeping him from going all the way on job-killing legislation in the name of the environment). But really, the guy hasn't held a private sector job since before 1955, and he then only had one for a short while before jumping onto the public sector career path.

The man is the career politician's poster boy of a career politician.