Supreme court justices and federal judges have always had lifetime appointments. Presidents and most representatives have traditionally been wealthy people who didn't need salaries. Term limits weren't put on the president until Roosevelt...so there was nothing limiting the length of time anyone could occupy these positions (beyond their means or the will of the voters) or find a way to make a career of it until fairly recently. We all know that Pelosi didn't make her millions from her salary while in office. They may have only had to meet in Washington once per year at one time but it would be naive to think they weren't spending a good portion of the rest of the year campaigning and meeting with constituents (hint: making money).
To clarify, if they meant for congress in particular to have limited activity in any form, and even if they wrote long letters/diatribes to each other stating that opinion, they didn't put any effective limits into the constitution...so we get what we have here today.
They didn’t put effective limits on many things. We have all agreed it wasn’t anywhere in writing. Just that there was no structure put in place to imply it was a lifelong career or it wasn’t. Which is why many today, like myself, feel term limits being out into place by law should be a priority so we don’t have 80 year olds in office who have been in politics for 60 years with no real experience other than politics.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk