cwnewz.com - Some in Congress are hoping to make it possible for Barack Obama to seek not only just a second term in office, but a third and forth as well.

 The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary is considering a bill that would repeal the Constitution's 22nd Amendment prohibiting a president from being elected to more than two terms in office.

Earlier this month Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., introduced the bill, H. J. Res. 5, which, according to the bill's language, proposes "an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President."

In the past, some presidents have been critical of the 22nd Amendment, including Eisenhower, Clinton and Reagan.

In 1807 Thomas Jefferson, however, warned that presidents not bound by term limits could use their popularity and power to become kings.

"If some termination to the services of the chief magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution or supplied in practice," Jefferson wrote to the Legislature of Vermont, "his office, nominally for years, will in fact become for life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance."

However, Presidential term limits, were not "fixed by the Constitution" until ratification of the 22nd Amendment which was passed by congress on March 21, 1947, shortly after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first and only president to be elected to more than two terms. (He was elected to four). The Amendment was ratified by the required number of states on Feb. 26, 1951.

The 22nd Amendment states, "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."

The Amendment limits presidents to a maximum of eight years in office – or, under unusual circumstances, such as succession following the death of a president, a maximum of ten years in office. Should Rep. Serrano succeed in repealing the Amendment, Obama would be cleared to run for an unlimited number of terms, restricted only by the vote of the electorate.

Serrano's proposal must be approved by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states' legislatures in order to achieve repeal of the 22nd Amendment.

This is not Serrano’s first attempt to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Serrano introduced H. J. Res. 11 to the 108th Congress to accomplish the same purpose in 2003. A similar resolution, H.J. Res. 25, was also proposed the same year and received co-sponsorship from a bipartisan group of six other representatives. In 1987, during Reagan's term of office, Earl Michener, R-Mich., also proposed a repeal of the 22nd Amendment.

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