Blogs For Victory

Perhaps – Marianne Moran in the Richmond Times-Dispatch discusses:

…A healthy government can only remain healthy when the people have more power and control over their lives and money, as they do in state government.

Our Founders anticipated a time in our nation where the federal government’s power would become out of balance — that time is now. However, the Founders, in their wisdom, did not leave the states powerless. They did provide a proper check and balance.

The Founders paved a road for the states to cross when Congress fails to represent the people. That road was paved in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly empowers states to call for a convention to propose a specific amendment…

And, indeed, it does:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress…

It would take application by 34 States – and from what I can tell, it doesn’t require the executive in any State for this to happen as the application is to be by the State legislatures (it would be an interesting case if popular referendum were used to make the application – in case some States proved unwilling while their people were). At any rate, it is just one of many mechanisms the Founders placed in the Constitution to provide a corrective to an overbearing central government.

Calling a Convention is a risky business – it should be kept in mind that while such a thing may be called for one purpose, it may decide to do something else, entirely…as long as the results are ratified by the States, the results stand. We could, if we wanted, re-write the whole thing. But I don’t think that would be necessary.

As noted in the linked article, the problem is not one of Democrats or Republicans so much as a a problem of power – the federal government has too much of it, and has consigned too much of it to the un-elected bureaucracy. We need to identify the best means of immediately stripping the federal government of power without causing too much disturbance in the system.

My favored approach would be forbid the writing of regulations by any other body than the legislature along with setting a time when the federal government will be forbidden from incurring debt. It’d be nice if we could also enforce a sound money policy, but I think that the first two things would go a long way towards the goal of redressing the imbalance of power.

A federal government where the legislators actually have to write every last bit of the bill rather than crafting vague directives for bureaucrats to flesh out would ensure that laws are more clear and direct in purpose and scope. Forbidding the issuance of government debt means that government will have to live within its means – politicians will be forced to either spend less, or directly burden the people with heavy taxes which would cause a political revolt at the polls.

Of course, nothing will ever be perfect – but I think it is time we gave serious consideration to a Convention, even if it does end up re-writing the whole thing.