Oppose Con-Con Resolutions in Your State Legislature

Oppose Con-Con Resolutions in Your State Legislature
Reprinted with permission

One or more new constitutional convention resolutions are expected in most state legislatures in 2013. The leading reasons for these calls will be to petition Congress to convene an Article V amendments convention, more popularly known as a constitutional convention (Con- Con), to propose one or more amendments, such as the National Debt Relief Amendment, a Balanced Budget Amendment, a Term Limits Amendment, etc. This year the Goldwater Institute has introduced a completely new approach to amending the Constitution via a Con-Con. This new Con-Con initiative is called the “Compact for America.”

Beware the Compact for America: A New Kind of Con-Con Initiative
From the JBS bulletin of December 2012 – by Larry Greenley, Director of Missions

We’ve been warning you in recent months that 2013 promises to be one of the most active Con-Con years ever.

Now that the election results make it virtually certain that trillion dollar federal deficits are here to stay, we can expect even more emphasis than usual on using an Article V constitutional convention to propose amendments that would limit increases in the national debt or to require balanced budgets.

A completely new approach to calling for a constitutional convention has just recently been introduced by Nick Dranias at the Goldwater Institute. It’s called the Compact for America. You can learn about it by going to http://www.compactforamerica.org/ and clicking on, “Watch videos and get educated.” By watching these videos you’ll learn that the Compact for America consists primarily of two pieces of legislation, one for state legislatures to pass and one for Congress to pass. The idea is to streamline the process for amending the Constitution via an Article V amendments convention (more commonly referred to as a constitutional con- vention) in order to add a balanced budget amendment (BBA) to the Constitution.

The goal of the Compact for America initiative is to get 38 states to pass their state legislative proposal. Any state passing this legislative proposal would be committing to applying to Congress to call a constitutional convention for proposing a BBA, and also committing to ratifying this BBA once it would be proposed by the Con-Con that would result from this same legislation and be referred back to the states for ratification by Congress.

One unusual aspect of this Compact for America proposal is that the actual Con-Con would consist of the 50 governors meeting in Dallas, Texas, for 24 hours or less for the purpose of rubber-stamping the BBA proposal that is built into the Compact for America’s legislative package.

We are developing educational tools to help you oppose the Compact for America if it is introduced in your state legislature. When they are available, we’ll post them on our “STOP A Con-Con” action page on JBS.org

ACTION SUMMARY

• Be on the lookout for Con-Con bills in your state legislature.

• Go to our “Choose Freedom — STOP A Con- Con” action page on JBS.org for our latest educational tools.