Posted on 03/30/2015 10:40:48 AM PDT by Sean_Anthony
Checks and balances.
If you’re frustrated by the refusal of Congress to stop its fiscal insanity – and how could you not be? – it’s time to start realizing that the Constitution gives states and the people more power over Congress than most realize. And right now there is an effort called the Article V Initiative that would wield and deploy that power.
Most people don’t know, because they have never been taught, that Article V of the Constitution empowers the people through their state legislatures to propose amendments. Specifically, Article V proscribes a process in which two-thirds of state legislatures (34 total) can vote to direct Congress to call a meeting of the states for the purpose of proposing amendments.
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
Hopefully it prescribes a process. Otherwise we're dead in the water.
The People no longer trusts the EXEMPT Congress.
Only a fool would believe the LIARS, who have lied
and lied and protected treason, fraud, destruction of
federal documents, and criminal activities
... as they get drunk every single day.
Paging the great one!
He’s in FL or CA...back Tuesday!
People in States don’t want to stop the fiscal insanity. Most of them just want their federal pork to keep coming in.
Retirees don’t HAVE any pork coming in and we are a pretty large voting block.
The biggest flaw in the original Constitution, imo, was letting the feds decide members of the Supreme Court.
And to worsen this problem, state lawmakers ratified the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, foolishly giving up their voices in Congress. Now the crooks that fool voters into electing them to the Senate are deciding who’s going to be on the Supreme Court.
The bottom line is that the 17th Amendment needs to disappear. And the repeal amendment needs to have a provision which optionally gives a 2/3 majority of state legislatures the power to remove activst justices from the bench since the Senate cannot always be trusted to work with the House to do so.
Retirees vote for federal funding of various city and county and regional projects. I see this all the time. Virtually everyone votes for the federal pork and actively seeks it. They vote on their Congress persons based on what goodies they can “bring back” to the States and cities.
I’d like to see the language of a Balanced Budget Amendment. How can we go to war and not go into debt? Do we raise taxes during war to keep the fight going? Are there any sitauations where the nation can run a defecit?
During the Reagan years, the left tried to cite defecits as a hollow excuse to try to stop nuclear weapons build up that brought the USSR to its’ knees. Sometimes a temporary defecit is a necessity (my mortgage for instance). This all comes down to the language.
Bump. For all things right and good, we should have a Balanced Budget Amendment. But, what happens in event of war...big war...world war...multi-stage, thermonuclear war? And the aftermath of such?
Moreover, what happens when the entitlements swallow the lion's share of the budget? What departments will be cut or what entitlements will be cut? The liberals would love to cut the military to a tenth of it's size on the pretense of balancing the budget.
I do not have the answers, but these must be addressed for a BBA.
The worst case scenario, and the nightmare flip side to a BBA, is what happens when the left decides a BBA means that in order to prepare for emergencies, the government must carry large surpluses and we are taxed, not to pay bills, but to keep a surplus to cover unforseen emergencies.
I think the Amendment should be written before this comes to a floor scrum that could end up biting us on the arse.
Call me cynical, but the power brokers/Oligarchs up in D.C. know full well what this would mean to their grasp on power...they'll not let that happen folks.
Maybe I'm wrong, but splain to me why this has not ALREADY happened and or where the process currently stands.
Heck, even a conservative state like Texas...I've heard nada, zilch about a push in the state legislature regarding Article V convention of the states.
Concur, and far more important than a balanced budget amendment which the libtards would find a way around in the courts. Bottom line we need to empower the state’s to control DC. This would be a significant step in that direction.
Below is an explanation roughly defining the ceiling for the federal budget which basically requires the ill-conceived 17th Amendment to be repealed.
Note that the explanation is based on the Supceme Court’s clarification of Congresss’s limted power to lay taxes.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Given that the plurality of clauses in Congress’s Section 8-limited powers deal with defense, and given that the Department of Defense budget for 2015 was $500+ billion, I will generously round up the annual price tag of the federal government to the taxpayers as $1 trillion (but probably much less).
In other words, the corrupt media, including Obama guard dog Fx News, shouldn’t be reporting multi-trillion annual federal budgets without mentioning the Supreme Court’s clarification of Congress’s limited power to lay taxes in budget discussions.
The reason that we now have an unconstitutionally big, tax-hungry federal government on our backs is this imo. When the Founding States established the federal Senate, they gave control of the Senate uniquely to state lawmakers. Part of the reason for having state legislatures control the Senate was so that the Senate could kill House appropriations bills which could not be justified under Congress’s Section 8-limited powers, such bills essentially stealing state revenues.
The problem is that the Progressive Movement spooked low-information citizens to pressure state lawmakers to ratify the ill-conceived 17th Amendment (17A). And state lawmakers caved in and ratified 17A, foolishly giving up the voices of the state legislatures in Congress.
So now, after voters elect their federal senators, they go home and watch football while corrupt senators rob voter’s wallets by working in cahoots with the corrupt House to pass unconstitutional appropriations bills.
Also, if it wasn’t for the 17th Amendment, state lawmakers might have built up a 2/3 conservative majority in the Senate by now. This means that Congress could have possibly impeached and booted lawless Obama from the Oval Office by now.
The 17th Amendment needs to disappear. And the repeal amendment needs a provision to give state legislatures the power to remove activist justices on a 2/3 state majority vote.
Hmmm, I spoke w/Hermann Cain on the air last year about Article V. I might as well have been talking to a wall.
Glad to see he has come around.
You can only balance the budget by doing one or more of the following:
1) raise taxes
2) bring all troops home
3) cut promised Social Security benefits
Be prepared to pick one.
The order of things:
1. elected more republicans (failed because of RINO Republicans)
2. Article V to place limits on fedgov (in progress)
3. State Nullfification (in progress)
4. Peaceful Breakup (if steps 2-3 fail)
5. Civil War II (if step 4 fails)
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but doesn’t each state that seeks to participate in an Article V convention have to file legislation and pass it to be on record as a represented state?
If there was to be a convention of the states, could liberal leaning states ALSO seek to amend the constitution?
How many states to date have passed Article V legislation and lay in wait for the remainder of the states to pass legislation to take part in a convention?
Maybe I’m missing something, but those same states also have delegations of representatives that serve in D.C.? Senate?
Could those state delegations to D.C. work to block efforts to formulate an Article V convention?
Curious
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