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This could be part of the reason....from USA TODAY:
"Term limits are undoubtedly a factor. He suggested as much at a February breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. Asked if he thought term limits on committee chairmen were a mistake, he offered a simple, "Yeah. I think so."
Term limits rose out of the 1994 GOP revolution, when Republicans swept into power on a pledge to change the way Washington runs. House Republicans, under then-speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., imposed a rule that legislators could not serve more than six years as the party's top lawmaker on a committee, even if those six years were spent in the minority. Senate Republicans followed suit, but with a tweak: Senate GOP chairmen could serve six years as chairman and six years as ranking minority member.
The original intention was noble. Certain party chairmen under decades of Democratic rule before the Republican Revolution held tremendous power, and Republicans believed it had a corrupting effect. (Democrats have never put similar term limits on their chairmen.)"
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