HOUSE RESOLUTION NO. 153

Reps. Arbit, Myers-Phillips, Tsernoglou, Rheingans, Glanville, McKinney, Steckloff, Andrews, Wegela, McFall, Mentzer, Wooden, Morgan, Coffia, Skaggs, Foreman, Breen, Young, MacDonell, Hoskins, Pohutsky, Price, B. Carter, Grant, Miller, Paiz, Scott, O'Neal, Martus, Hope, Conlin, Wilson, Koleszar, Weiss, Longjohn, Brixie and Puri offered the following resolution:

A resolution to reaffirm our support for the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, establishing a two-term limit for the office of President of the United States.

Whereas, The United States has had a strong norm of a two-term limit for President since our founding days, which we have since codified as the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Only one United States President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has ever served for more than two terms, and it was his unprecedented election to third and fourth terms of office that prompted the creation of the Twenty-Second Amendment. As a result, our Constitution now provides:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

; and

Whereas, All Presidents have respected the two-term limit since it was ratified in the mid-20th century; and

Whereas, Term limits act as a crucial barrier to the consolidation of power by would-be autocrats. One of the more common forms of democratic backsliding today is executive aggrandizement, whereby elected executives weaken checks on their power. Presidential systems are inherently more vulnerable to democratic backsliding than parliamentary systems, especially given the tremendous power concentrated in the office of the president. Term limits are an important constitutional safeguard in presidential systems, as has been recognized by many nations across the globe. According to data from the Comparative Constitutions Project, as of 2023, the constitutions of 108 countries imposed term limits on the office of president; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives, That we reaffirm our support for the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, establishing a two-term limit for the office of President of the United States; and be it further

Resolved, That we reject any claim by any individual intended to undermine the Twenty-Second Amendment, or any attempt by any individual to delegitimize, weaken, amend, ignore, or subvert the Twenty-Second Amendment.