In “It’s Time for Americans to Decide the Future of This Country” (The Blaze, August 2, 2016), Mark Meckler makes a compelling case for convening an Article V Convention of States to rein in the federal government’s excesses. Meckler is the president of Citizens for Self-Governance, which founded the Convention of States Project.
Meckler reminds us that the national debt has doubled under the current president, and now stands at $19 trillion. Worse, as enormous a burden as $19 trillion is, this pales in comparison to the additional $100 trillion that the federal government owes in Social Security benefits and other programs.
Add to this financial crisis a regulatory crisis that is stalling economic growth and making Americans poorer, as well as a legislative crisis consisting of ongoing Congressional assaults on state sovereignty, and you cannot help but come to the conclusion that Washington, D.C. is broken—broken beyond the ability and/or the willingness of the federal government to remedy the crisis it has caused.
But the good news, as Meckler writes, is that America’s Founders not only anticipated such federal overreach but also provided a remedy—Article V of the Constitution, which empowers states to call for an amendments convention to reverse the disastrous course on which our federal policymakers have taken the nation.