Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Thomas, J., dissenting
addition, the internal rules of Congress put a substantial premium on seniority, with the result that each Member's already plentiful opportunities to distribute benefits to his constituents increase with the length of his tenure. In this manner, Congress effectively "fines" the electorate for voting against incumbents. Hills, 53 U. Pitt. L. Rev., at 144-145.
Cynics see no accident in any of this. As former Representative Frenzel puts it: "The practice . . . is for incumbents to devise institutional structures and systems that favor incumbents." App. to Brief for State of Washington as Amicus Curiae A-3. In fact, despite his service from 1971 to 1989 on the House Administration Committee (which has jurisdiction over election laws), Representative Frenzel can identify no instance in which Congress "changed election laws in such a way as to lessen the chances of re-election for incumbents, or to improve the election opportunities for challengers." Ibid.
At the same time that incumbents enjoy the electoral advantages that they have conferred upon themselves, they also enjoy astonishingly high reelection rates. As Lloyd Cutler reported in 1989, "over the past thirty years a weighted average of ninety percent of all House and Senate incumbents of both parties who ran for reelection were reelected, even at times when their own party lost control of the Presidency itself." Cutler, Now is the Time for All Good Men . . . , 30 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 387, 395; see also Kristol, Term Limitations: Breaking Up the Iron Triangle, 16 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Policy 95, 97, and n. 11 (1993) (reporting that in the 100th Congress, as many Representatives died as were defeated at the polls). Even in the November 1994 elections, which are widely considered to have effected the most sweeping change in Congress in recent memory, 90% of the incumbents who sought reelection to the House were successful, and nearly half of the losers were completing only their first terms. Reply Brief for Petitioners U. S. Term Limits, Inc., et al. 4, n. 5. Only 2 of the 26 Senate incumbents seeking reelection were defeated, see ibid., and one of
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