How does that work exactly? 4 year terms with elections every two years?
You stagger it.
The Senate has 6 year terms but elections every 2 years, because of the way their terms expire. The House would run on the same principle - post-reform, half the House would serve 2 years, the other half 4, and from then on, each would serve 4 years. The result is half the House is up every 2 years. (This is how we set up the Senate, too - the first Senate had a branch that served 2 years, another that served 4, and then a final that served 6)
I don't mind the 2 year term limit, keeps things flowing, what bugs me is that in order to get reelected congressmen need to raise thousands of dollars and constantly be in campaign mode.
Extending the years will still mean they're stuck in campaign mode, just for longer, which is worse. If people in congress no longer had to worry about money in order to get reelected, then maybe they could do their job; this also comes with the bonus of decreasing the amount of power lobbyists have.
I personally don't see why altering the terms needs to be exclusive from campaign finance; I think they could work well together.
As for serving four years extending campaign mode - is the President always in campaign mode?
Term limits, on top of four year terms and campaign finance, would also eliminate their need to campaign. If running the chance they might go overboard in their final days, as Presidents often do.
Yeah, but as you said, you lose the entire point of the house, which is to represent the people, not the state. Keep the districts, just make sure that redistricting isn't in the hands of the people in power, nor anyone who could be in power. Either a bipartisan or a nonpartisan committee should handle that stuff.
How do you decide who gets on the committee?
Another idea is to abolish state-allotted representatives entirely. Have the House elected by a national electorate(likely party-list and whatnot because of the sheer scale). This has the cost of eliminating the district-based interests.
There's all sorts of ways to re-shuffle a bicameral legislature. One idea of mine would be to have half the house be elected nationally and the other half by districts, a la Germany's system. Then you have the Senate on top of that. You represent districts, the nation as a whole, and the States.
Stagger elections would still be possible; one year just have those Representatives who represent districts run, then two years later have national Representatives run, then two years after that, the district-based reps run, and so on.
