“The fact that unintended consequences of government regulation are usually (but not always or necessarily) negative is not an accident.”
Freakonomics
On April 14th 2014, Michigan lawmakers endorsed a call for a constitutional convention (to require the federal government to balance the budget) pursuant a scenario inserted into Article V of the U.S. Constitution; which defines two ways for amendments to be proposed. The first, used for all 27 amendments to-date, requires ⅔ of both the House and Senate to approve a resolution, before sending it to the states for ratification where ¾ of them (or 38 states) must adopt it.
However, the Founding Fathers which didn’t trust and sought to restrain the federal government, cleverly devised an alternative, permitting ⅔ (presently 34) of the state legislatures to call for a constitutional convention … after which, Congress “shall call a convention for proposing amendments.”
Frustrated with their federal government’s unwillingness to balance its budget, require members of Congress and the Administration to make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives (the now-viral proposed 28th Amendment), enact term limits for Congress and the Judiciary, limit the national debt, and a laundry list of other political (i.e., limiting income taxes, and requiring the federal government to fund mandates imposed on the states) and social (banning abortion and flag desecration) issues, Michigan and other states have petitioned for such a convention over the years.
If, as some people contend, Michigan is the 34th state to call for a constitutional convention, then Congress is obligated to call one. However, it remains unclear whether:
- An “application” (Article V specifies the singular of the word) of the [state] legislatures must declare the specifics of a proposed amendment in its call for a convention; if that is the case, Michigan would only be the 18th state seeking a balanced budget amendment;
- A convention could run wild and rewrite the entire document; as was the case in 1787 when a constitutional convention assembled to amend the Articles of Confederation and ended up scrapping the Articles and drafted our current Constitution; and/or
- Can a state’s application be rescinded; to-date 17 states have attempted to rescind their original applications since 1988, although several have refiled revised applications.
However tempting it is to jump on the constitutional convention bandwagon, such a conclave is fraught with dangers which could materially expand the powers of our federal government and/or reduce our protected rights presently enshrined in the Bill of Rights (i.e., many would limit free speech if such speech made others “uncomfortable”), without which the Constitution would never have been adopted.
Given 95%-plus of incumbents seeking re-election are reelected at every level of government, it would be highly probably the same partisan politicians who have, and continue to ignore their constitutional responsibilities, put re-election and party before the interests of their constituents and regularly vote themselves ever larger salaries, benefits/perks and retirement payments (far beyond any that the vast majority of Americans will ever realize) will be the same hacks who would be elected to a constitutional convention.
Then, if you think special interest groups, corporations and wealthy individuals pour money into lobbying Congress and political campaigns … can you imagine the billions which would be spent to reconstruct our Constitution to their narrow self-interests.
Tragically, there are no Thomas Jeffersons, James Madisons or George Masons on the horizon!
Perhaps a saving grace is that America is so divided among Red and Blue states that it is unlikely a constitutional convention would agree on and adopt many amendments and even more improbable that any radical changes would be “ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof.”
A better, perhaps more radical, solution would be to throw every incumbent out of office and let the newly-elected know that their tenure will be extremely short if they don’t take immediate action on addressing the laundry list of issues prompting so many states to call for an Article V constitutional convention.
