Governor Christie Wants Term Limits For Legislators [AUDIO]

Governor Chris Christie is banging the drum for term limits in the Garden State.

He says he's been in favor of term limits for a long time, because "the way we draw these legislative maps in the state, it makes 34 or 35 of the 40 districts completely safe from one party or the other.  And so, the Republican in a certain district has almost no chance of losing and a Democrat in another district has almost no chance of losing."

He says, "The idea that opponents of term limits say - well, we don't need term limits - we have term limits -they're called elections - is ridiculous in practice because a lot of these folks just can't lose…I don't understand why it is that they say we're going to lose all kinds of experience if we do this.  Well, they don't worry about that with the President, they restrict the President to 2 terms.  They don't worry about that with the Governor.  The Governor is restricted to 2 terms…Is the Legislature really more valuable than the President of the United States, more valuable than the Governor of New Jersey?"

Christie adds he believes term limits would help cut down on corruption in Jersey.

"When I was U.S. Attorney," he says, "we wound up putting 10 percent of the state Legislature in jail.  During my 7 years, we convicted 132 public officials - Republicans and Democrats while I was U.S. Attorney - without a defeat in any public corruption cases.  I absolutely believe that term limits would help, because I think the longer people are there the more entitled they become - the more entitled they feel…I believe there should be term limits for everybody and I think putting new blood into government on a regular basis will make sense."

He points out our Constitution says letting elected officials stay in office indefinitely is not a good idea.

"People decided they didn't want a king.  They wanted someone to come and serve as the executive for a period of time - no more than 8 consecutive years…I don't understand why we can't have the same kind of thing in the Legislature, in Congress as well."