GOP eyes balanced budget revision
Conservative state legislators frustrated with the gridlock in Washington are turning to a plan to call a convention to consider a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Legislators in 27 states have passed applications for a convention to pass a balanced budget amendment.
Proponents of a balanced budget requirement are planning to push for new applications in nine other states where Republicans control both chambers of the legislature.
If those applications pass in seven of the nine targeted states, it would bring the number of applications up to 34, meeting the two-thirds requirement under Article V of the Constitution to force Congress to call a convention.
What would happen next is anyone’s guess.
“There really isn’t much of a precedent. We’ll be charting new waters,” said Utah Sen-
ate President Wayne Niederhauser, a Republican and a supporter of a constitutional convention. Utah became the 26th state to issue an application last month. North and South Dakota also have approved applications this year.
The problem is that while the Constitution allows amendments to be adopted and sent to the states by a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate, or by a national convention called by twothirds of the states, the founding document is silent on how such a convention would operate.
How many delegates each state would receive, the rules under which a convention would operate and who would set the agenda would be left up to Congress.
Most worrying to some who oppose the convention: There’s no indication that a convention could be limited to just one topic.
Hypothetically, delegates could take up any issue they wanted, from reinstating Prohibition to eliminating the direct election of senators. More extreme scenarios envision delegates revisiting the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery, or inserting corporate giveaways into the Constitution.
“There’s no authority establishing in the Constitution above that of a convention. If you call a convention, what you’re doing is opening up the Constitution to whatever the delegates want to propose,” said Michael Leachman, director of state fiscal research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the center-left think tank that has opposed calls for a convention since the 1980s.
Even supporters acknowledge that a convention would be difficult to control.
“Can a convention’s agenda be limited? That’s a good question. We don’t know,” Utah’s Niederhauser said. “I suspect there would be a lot of discussion of that as we get closer to the 34 states calling a convention.”
Legislation to call a convention to consider a balanced budget amendment is pending in four of the nine targeted states: Idaho, Arizona, South Carolina and Oklahoma. Bills to call a convention failed in four others: Virginia, Wyoming, West Virginia and Montana. No bill has yet been introduced in Wisconsin.
Over the centuries, every state but one — Hawaii — has issued an application for a convention, on topics as broad as eliminating the electoral college, outlawing polygamy, limiting income taxes and making abortion illegal. None have ever reached the two-thirds necessary to trigger a convention.