Imagine if President Barack Obama could run for office again. Representative Jose Serrano (D-NY) introduced a bill on Friday which would allow President Obama to do just that. H.J. Resolution 15 would abolish term limits for U.S. presidents by repealing 22nd Amendment. This is not Serrano’s first attempt; he has proposed similar bills every two years since 1997, during Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies.
In January 2011, Serrano introduced a similar bill titled H.J. Res 17, which was sent to theHouse judiciary committee but never reach the floor for a vote. In the likelihood the current bill is passed, President Obama would become the first president since Franklin Roosevelt to run for third term.
The resolution asks “ to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.” The 22nd Amendment, passed in 1947 and ratified in 1951 as a reaction to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fourth term presidency, bars any president from serving more than two full terms in office. Both the House and the Senate and three-fourths of the states would have to approve the constitutional amendment.
Serrano joins Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md), Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in 1989 and Rep. Guy Vander Jagt in 1986 (who was hoping Ronald Reagan could seek a third term) in pushing to repeal the 22nd Amendment.
NBCLatino and MSNBC contributor Victoria DeFrancesco Soto says the bill is not going to get very far. ”The political climate is so extreme right now, there is no room for that,” she says. “We were founded on rejection of the royalty so there is a historic precedence to set term limits, no Congress is going to pass it.” [NBC]