Arizona State Senator Sponsors Bills to Call for a Convention of States

Sen. Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) is proposing three bills that ask Congress to call for a Convention of States as allowed for in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, so the states can vote on and adopt amendments to the Constitution. Once two-thirds of state legislatures demand a Convention of States, also known as an Article V Convention, the Constitution mandates it. The states then run the convention, passing and ratifying amendments with a three-quarters majority — without Congress, the president, or governors involved.

SCR 1014 would propose a “federal fiscal responsibility” amendment, and states that enough states met the threshold in 1979 but Congress failed to order a convention. 

Read the full story

Commentary: 40 Years Of Congress Not Proposing Any Constitutional Amendments Does Not Mean That Changes To The Constitution Are Not Wanted

August 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the very last time that Congress proposed an amendment to the United States Constitution. It was on August 22, 1978, that the 95th Congress offered to the state legislatures for ratification a constitutional amendment that–had it been ratified by the required number of states within its 7-year deadline on August 22, 1985–would have granted to Washington, D.C. two United States Senators and however many members of the United States House of Representatives the District of Columbia’s population would have warranted. But the lack of action by Congress over the past four decades in proposing constitutional amendments certainly has not meant that there is no desire among Americans to change the federal Constitution. Gaining momentum during that same decade of the 1970s was a movement within the state legislatures to trigger the calling of an “Article V Convention” whereby state lawmakers may largely–but not entirely–bypass a recalcitrant Congress and push for a federal constitutional amendment that, perhaps, Congress might understandably prefer to suppress.  In this particular case, that would be an amendment requiring the federal budget to be in balance. Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides in pertinent part:  “The Congress…on the application…

Read the full story