WATCH: Lawmakers reveal where they stand on congressional term limits after recent health scares

Ted Cruz reviving his term limits amendment after another round of health scares on Capitol Hill is one of those moments where the timing does most of the talking. Lawmakers stumbling through floor votes, aides quietly steering wheelchairs, leadership dodging questions about who's actually running committees. It's not subtle. And Cruz, to his credit, has been saying the same thing for years now: two terms for senators, three for the House. That's not a new position he found because it's convenient this week.

The harder question is why this keeps stalling. Everyone in that building knows the seniority system rewards sticking around, and nobody wants to be the one who votes himself out of a job in twelve years. That's the real obstacle, not some abstract debate about whether term limits are good policy. Ask any member privately whether an 88-year-old senator missing votes because of a fall is a sign the system is working, and you won't get many yeses. Ask them to put it in writing and vote on an amendment, and suddenly it's a different conversation.

We're not naive about the tradeoffs. Term limits mean losing people who actually know how a bill becomes law, and swapping them for a rotating cast that lobbyists and staff end up running instead. That's a real cost. But the current arrangement isn't exactly protecting institutional knowledge either. It's protecting incumbency, full stop, and pretending otherwise doesn't fix the guy who can't remember what he voted for an hour ago.

Cruz putting his name on this again doesn't mean it passes. Constitutional amendments need two-thirds majorities and three-quarters of the states, and turkeys famously don't vote for Thanksgiving. But the fact that health scares are what's forcing this conversation back into the open says plenty about how little self-policing this Congress is willing to do on its own.