(USA - Convention of States) - An Outside the Box Solution as Big as Our Nation’s Problems - By Senator Tom Coburn

<Blockquote>'Switzerland suffered a decade of increasing debt and deficits. In response, in 2001, the Swiss passed a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget..'

- '..learning from the Swiss, Germany introduced its own balanced budget amendment..'</blockquote>


<blockquote>'Germany achieved a budget surplus of 21.1 billion euros .. in the first half of 2015..'</blockquote>


'Imagine what America would be like if Congress’s taxing and spending power could only be used in relation to its specifically enumerated powers in Article I, as originally intended.

..

America could be, again, what the Founders intended and designed: a constitutional republic suited for a free, industrious, self-governing people.'

<blockquote>An Outside the Box Solution as Big as Our Nation’s Problems

By Senator Tom Coburn
April 16, 2016
Source

Precision in numbers is critical to accountants and important to economists. But for most other people, there is a point at which a number gets so big that its increase seems irrelevant. This is a variation of the law of diminishing returns: the bigger the number, the less impact it has, because it is so far removed from anything people can relate to.

That is what has happened with the numbers reflecting our astounding national debt.

Nineteen trillion plus (and rising rapidly) dollars of debt on the books. One hundred forty trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities to boot. How many Americans can truly have any concept of what those numbers mean? If the deficit soon balloons to $1.5 trillion, the problem will become more severe.

And as the numbers continue to grow higher (what comes after a trillion?), ordinary Americans become inoculated to rational concern about the looming disaster they represent. We keep hearing these astronomical figures, but we go on about our business as usual and feel no impact of the predicted storm. Some people even dare to hope that if the “right” candidate is elected President this year, they will receive more goodies from an increasingly generous Uncle Sam who maintains every outward appearance of being flush with cash.

Unlike a natural disaster, which sometimes comes with little warning and always through no fault of our own, our nation’s impending financial crisis is completely predictable and is the outcome of a machine we created and continue to operate. It is an outcome of the federal government over which we, the people, have ultimate control.

We got into this mess because we have allowed the feds to operate far beyond their specific, enumerated constitutional powers. However well-intentioned the politicians who envisioned a national government program, policy, or regulation as the answer to every human need or problem, they were wrong. And now we are staring down the hard consequences of glossing over the original meaning of the Constitution, which never allowed for the type of plenary federal government we have today.

This is a hard truth and is difficult to actually process. But what we think is more important to grasp is that our responsibility for causing the crisis is just the flipside of the truth that we hold the power – indeed the duty – to make a course correction.

Having spent time in Congress, I am just as disillusioned as the next guy with the idea that there is some political solution to the situation that has any realistic prospect of succeeding. Every member of Congress knows that whichever Congress actually passes financial reforms that shut off the flow of money from D.C. will be fired. And politicians tend to want to keep their jobs.

The solution we need and can implement is not merely a political one. It has to be a structural one. It requires us to close the constitutional loopholes that allowed the feds to move beyond their proper, limited authority and initiate programs, engage in spending, and create agencies that are way outside federal jurisdiction under the original meaning of the Constitution.

The way we can realistically do this is through an Article V convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution. This is a state-initiated, state-led, and state-controlled process for proposing amendments that don’t sit well with the power-hungry elitists in D.C. It requires two-thirds of the state legislatures (34 states) to pass applications for a convention to propose amendments on a given topic. States then appoint and instruct delegates to represent them at the convention. Any proposals that garner support from the majority of the states (on a one-state, one-vote basis) are then submitted to the states. Proposed amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 states) in order to become part of the Constitution.

There is already a massive, nationwide effort underway to trigger an Article V convention for the states to consider proposing a series of very limited amendments that impose fiscal restraints on D.C., limit its power and jurisdiction, and set term limits for federal officials – including federal judges.

It’s called the Convention of States Project, and it has made huge strides in just a few years. Six states have already passed their applications. Approximately thirty-four more will take up the issue this year. Over 1.2 million people are engaged at some level—from volunteer leaders in all 50 states to Facebook followers.

The project has been endorsed by some of the greatest statesmen, economic experts, and legal minds in the country, including Sen. Marco Rubio, Governor Greg Abbott, Thomas Sowell, Mark Levin, Michael Farris, Randy Barnett, Robert P. George, Chuck Cooper, and countless others.

Imagine what America would be like if Congress’s taxing and spending power could only be used in relation to its specifically enumerated powers in Article I, as originally intended.

Imagine if we had a robust, functioning federal system again, with the states deciding the lion’s share of the policies that govern their citizens rather than doing the bidding of Washington, D.C. as it holds their citizens’ tax dollars hostage.

Imagine if businesses and industries weren’t assaulted on every side by rules and regulations being crafted by unelected bureaucrats in ivory towers at a rate of over 80,000 new pages a year.

America could be, again, what the Founders intended and designed: a constitutional republic suited for a free, industrious, self-governing people.

Once we do realize that a natural disaster is coming, we take the concrete, necessary steps to prepare for it and protect the lives and property in its path. It must be no different with the national financial crisis we see on the horizon.

We must repair our constitutional levees by mobilizing the states to forcibly impose discipline on a fiscally irresponsible Washington, D.C. And we must ensure that this self-made storm can never be re-created.

Learn more and get involved in the Solution as Big as the Problem, at Convention of States Action. Senator Coburn can be contacted at SenatorTomCoburn@cosaction.com.</blockquote>


Context

<blockquote>‘Knowledge is a tool of action. Its function is to advise man how to proceed in his endeavor to remove uneasiness….’

- Ludwig von Mises (Context: Affectivity, Action, Electricity)


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