The notion that members of Congress quickly lose touch with their home districts and increasingly attend only to each other led to an active term limits movement in the 1990s. Arizona congressman Matt Salmon, who has limited himself to three terms in office, put it this way:
"I can’t count the numbers of times people have said, well, Matt, I know you look at so-and-so as king of a squishy congressman, somebody that vacillates on the issues, but boy you should have known him back when he first got here. Boy, he was the Rock of Gibraltar…. [Members of Congress] really have an intense sense of patriotism, of love for their country…. But something happens along the way. You kind of get in the position of having to go along to get along – you do!" (U.S. Term Limits 1999. "Rock of Gibraltar." in No Uncertain Terms 7: 3-4.)
Cleta Deatherage Mitchell, director of the Americans Back in Charge Foundation, testified before the House Judiciary Committee of the 105th Congress:
"I began to realize that the trend in the late 20th Century was for members of Congress to get elected and move to Washington -- and over time become the emissary from the nation’s capital to the voters, instead of the other way around…. By the end of the 1980s, members of our Congressional delegation in Oklahoma – and elsewhere – were like the non-custodial parent in a divorced family: they visited us on weekends and holidays, they sent money, but they didn’t live with us…and over time, they didn’t know us very well. I was one of millions of Americans who became increasingly distressed by the arrogance in Washington and a seemingly impenetrable national government. I joined the effort for term limits to try and make changes in that system – not because the people in it were bad. They’re not. It is the system that needs to be fixed (Hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, 1/22/97)."
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