Posted on 12/16/2014 11:45:54 AM PST by reaganaut1
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The Compact for a Balanced Budget is a well-conceived idea that would give the nation a new amendment putting a limit on the amount the federal government can borrow, a maximum of 105 percent of the current debt. Nick Dranias, who is spearheading the compact, argues in this Freeman interview, “Using an interstate compact to coordinate the amending of the Constitution from the states, which represents perhaps the ultimate problem of collective action in politics, is just a natural solution.”
I suspect that it’s the only solution.
What makes the state compact approach both appealing and practical is that the key issues would all be settled in advance. Once 38 states have voted to join the compact (at this point, two have: Alaska and Georgia), the application for a convention that would consider only the precise amendment drafted and then either approve or disapprove it becomes operative. Congress would only require simple majorities in each chamber to approve the convention, and that seems within reach, although no sure thing.
Look for a lot of action in state legislatures next year as advocates of restraining federal debt argue for joining the Compact, while interest groups that know a slowing of government spending would hurt them try to derail it with “the sky is falling” claims.
Let’s suppose that the proposed amendment were ratified. Congress would then have to face constraints like the rest of us do. With a constitutional limit on further borrowing (not just the easily increased “debt ceiling”) scarcity and the need for trade-offs would suddenly matter to the president and members of Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
no thanks, I don’t want state legislatures changing the Constitution and then having their decisions rubber stamped.
pass on that.
The reason that amending the constitution is hard is because that is how the founders wanted it to be.
The constitution should not be subject to the fads or trends of public opinion.
A constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget would only result in ever raising taxes to cover a never ending spending by congress, for congress cannot skim from what they don’t spend. We need a Constitutional Amendment making members of government, including Congress, punishable by death if they are caught and convicted of any crime.
It’s broken.
You do realize that the Constitution already gives the states this power?? It has never been used, but it is there for them to use.
All this "compact" does is to limit the topics to be acted on to a single proposal, rather than an open-ended process.
A balanced budget amendment is ill conceived. It gives the Left tremendous power and justification for raising taxes which are deadly. And it sidesteps the heart of America’s political and economic problem: big government. The deficit is not deadly. It’s not good, but it’s not deadly. Our economy is running and even thriving despite all the interference of the feds and despite the feds deficit.
Deadly to an economy and individual wealth and financial wholeness is raising taxes. Taxes are an economy killer.
The real key is applying a deadly blow, if one is possible, to the unconstitutional activities and bureaucracies, like the $1 trillion HHS, of the $4 trillion federal government which needs to be cut by at least 80%. That will automatically force deficits lower. Government will always spend more than it takes in. The key is shrinking government.The deficit of a relatively small government will be relatively small.
From the first 10 amendments up to now, there were additions to the constitution. Most of these amendments were for good reasons, while a few were very stupid. I could name a few very stupid ones. The amendment to institute the IRS, and the amendment to change the elections of senators would be another. But the stupidest amendment was the amendment to stop the production of liquor. So, let’s not think that our constitution, except for the first ten, were written in stone. An amendment for a balance amendment is probably one that is very necessary, in order to constrain this ever more powerful government. The only thing that will stop this monster, that we call GOVERNMENT, is to constrain their spending
the right to call a constitutional convention, yeah I know.
and the numbers of states required to call one has been hovering very near to the number needed to convene one.
This has been hovering over our heads since I was kid.
This is a way to call a convention without the accepted procedure.
Once called, it can discuss anything it wants, even scrapping the constitution itself.
This falls into the category of CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR! YOU MIGHT GET IT!
Proposal:
There are two ways to propose an amendment to the Constitution.
Article V gives Congress and an Amendments Convention exactly the same power to propose amendments, no more and no less.
Disposal:
Once Congress, or an Amendments Convention, proposes amendments, Congress must decide whether the states will ratify by the:
The State Ratifying Convention Method has only been used twice: once to ratify the Constitution, and once to ratify the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition.
Ratification:
Depending upon which ratification method is chosen by Congress, either the state legislatures vote up-or-down on the proposed amendment, or the voters elect a state ratifying convention to vote up-or-down. If three-quarters of the states vote to ratify, the amendment becomes part of the Constitution.
Forbidden Subjects:
Article V contains two explicitly forbidden subjects and one implicitly forbidden subject.
Explicitly forbidden:
Implicitly forbidden:
I have two reference works for those interested.
The first is from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative pro-business group. This document has been sent to every state legislator in the country.
Proposing Constitutional Amendments by a Convention of the States: A Handbook for State Lawmakers
The second is a 1973 report from the American Bar Association attempting to identify gray areas in the amendatory process to include an Amendments Convention. It represents the view of the ruling class of 40 years ago. While I dislike some of their conclusions, they have laid out the precedents that may justify those conclusions. What I respect is the comprehensive job they did in locating all the gray areas. They went so far as to identify a gray area that didn't pop up until the Equal Rights Amendment crashed and burned a decade later. Even if you find yourself in disagreement with their vision, it's worth reading to see the view of the ruling class toward the process.
Report of the ABA Special Constitutional Convention Study Committee
I admire your faith in the political class; you actually believe that if such a convention were to assembled, they wouldn’t immediately throw the rules “under the bus.”
Think about the politicians who would make this hypothetical convention and what their beliefs are and tell me those people will obey what the Constitution says.
They have been trying to destroy it for years.
I'm not sure that there is enough money on Earth to borrow that much :-)
But, in essence, expansion of the government is the prime function of the government. Everything else will be sacrificed, if necessary, such as:
It's like taking the wallet away from a drug addict and thinking that he will now get a job. There are always solutions of complex problems that are simple and wrong.
Take, for example, those social programs. About half of taxes is spent on those. However the society, like another drug addict, is dependent on those because there are no jobs for those who want to work, and there are plenty of recipients who do not want to work (nor know how, for generations.) Some, destroyed by decades of drugs and crime, are entirely unemployable (unless you are hiring into a street gang.) Terminating their food allowance will not result in them magically getting employed - it will result in them going Ferguson in every city and every town of the country. The government is sitting on a big social bomb; as they don't want to start a decade-long process of defusing it, they resort to a cheaper and simpler process of stuffing more powder into it. Though the size of the nonproductive class is already large enough to shake up this country if social assistance is cancelled or reduced.
This means that the debt of the country is primarily an effect of a larger cause. That cause is simply that the country is neither able nor willing to provide every citizen with an honest, productive job that is worth the time. The country chose to simply feed the unwanted population to avoid a social unrest. As that unwanted population grows, more and more money is needed to feed them, and the cost of servicing that debt also increases. You usually want to strike at the root cause of the problem; in this case it would be to put people to work, so that the USD would have real value in it, outside of external oil trade. It would have value if other countries can buy large amounts of various US goods for US currency. Right now the USD has value only because of historical and political reasons, which makes it vulnerable.
Here is one idea as an example. As you know, a certain President many years ago made a commitment to develop the US space program - and that was done. Today another President could commit the entire country to another challenge - say, to develop and produce a usable anthropomorphic robot that could replace human labor. This program would use existing US leadership in electromechanics, computers, and AI research. This program could occupy lots of people, from machinists to programmers and scientists. This program, once successful, would result in a significant increase of wealth of the society. The country would be able to produce goods again, for less than China is doing today, as robots don't require medical insurance or generous OSHA rules or 52-hour work week.
Maybe, how many combat divisions do they have?
The plan is for the legislatures of the states to select the delegates to attend and to give those delegates particular instructions as to what can and cannot be considered.
The safety valve is the fact that an Amendments Convention possesses only the right of Proposal. It would take 38 states to ratify, and that ratification is not accomplished within the Amendments Convention. The proposed amendments would be delivered by the convention to Congress, which would determine whether the states would ratify by state legislatures or state ratifying conventions. (We used state ratifying conventions for the 21st Amendment in 1933, so there is ample precedent for that method if Congress so chooses.)
Do you honestly think that 38 states would throw out the entire Constitution, which by the way Article V implicitly forbids?
Republicans now control the legislatures of 39 states. This is one of those rare moments when the balance can be redressed. I would recommend Mark Levin's book The Liberty Amendments, because that it one of the prime works behind the movement.
They would be a little late don't you think? The Constitution was scrapped long ago, unless they need it to extract more property/freedom from the people.
Never work unless they have the right to vote.
FRiend,
I will have to respectfully disagree.
how many of the 39 state legislatures are filled with RINO’s?
are RINO’s any different from libs?
What do libs want from us (besides money)?
IMO.
In your opinion, how many state legislatures or conventions of the people should consent to ratification in order to amend the constitution?
I would leave it as the founders wrote it.
The problem is a power-hungry political class and those trying to stop them not taking time to think about UNINTENDED consequences which are often disastrous.
As bad as it is right now; don’t mess with it, because the reality is that the outcome will be far worse than what exists at the moment.
Well, that's not how the framing generation viewed their work. Representative, republican government had to be amendable. If it wasn't, it wasn't republican government, but rather some form of despotism.
It took all thirteen states to amend the Articles of Confederation. On two occasions in the early 1780s, congress couldn't get a limited term of power to tax imports at, IIRC, five percent. Without revenue, what passed for government was on the verge of collapse by 1787.
It was the difficulty of amending the Articles that, in large part, lead to the constitution.
Today, we have a government without bounds. We have the God given and constitutional right to modify and structure our government so that it fulfills the just purpose of government as per our Declaration of Independence.
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