June 16, 1996

To Heck With Congress, Call Constitutional Convention

Poor Bob Dole!

The Republican presidential candidate hung around the Senate as long as possible hoping to accomplish a long held goal - an amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget.

He gave up when Democrats clobbered him with parliamentarian road blocks to deny him a campaign issue.

Dole last year came within one vote of the two-thirds majority needed to put the proposal to referendum by state legislatures. Last week he missed again - by two votes.

In both cases, Democrats voted solidly in the negative, even though seven Senators of that party had campaigned for election favoring the amendment. It will be interesting to see how their constituencies react this coming election day to this breach of promise.

This partisan maneuver also frustrated a majority of Americans who want to impose the same budget discipline on Congress as is mandated by 42 state constitutions.

Despite vociferous objections by young representatives in the House, Republicans this week tucked their tails between their legs and passed the 1997 budget dictated by President Clinton. The new budget is designed to reach balance in 2002 but will take large deficits in the first two years. Draconian spending cuts for the out years will be the responsibility of whom ever wins the election in November. This would be of no consequence to second-term Clinton but devastating to Dole.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich also suffered defeat last year in his quest for a constitutional amendment limiting terms of Congress members. It was the only item in his Contract With America that failed in the House. Twenty-three states have adopted term limits for legislators. Gingrich promises that a term limit amendment will the first bill introduced in the next Congress if Republicans retain control. Despite intense Democrat efforts to demonize Gingrich, his word is recognized as a bond.

Americans also were big losers in the constitutional amendment defeats. All opinion polls indicate the two issues are strongly supported by voters outside the Washington, D.C. fairyland.

Meaningful legislation is kaput for the rest of this political year. However, there is hope for the future.

Voters may elect a veto-proof Republican Congress and administration which together will be able complete the reforms stymied by the current Congress.

Should Clinton win a second term - and/or Democrats enlarge their clout in Congress - fed-up citizens could employ a potent weapon against congressional intransigence. A constitutional convention.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution stipulates: "On application by the Legislatures of two-thirds of the states, Congress shall call a Convention for proposing amendments which shall be valid as part of this Constitution when ratified by conventions in three-fourths of the states thereof."

The magic number of states needed to call a constitutional convention is 34. Valid petitions are on file from 45 states. Nevertheless, there never has been such an ultimate expression of democracy.

"Why hasn't Congress complied with the clear instructions of the Constitution, you ask?"

Good question.

Since the Constitution was ratified in 1787, the states have submitted 399 applications for a convention. Most failed for lack of adequate support. Some had time limits. The 45 convention petitions still on the books have met the two-thirds test and do not contain a time limit. The 27th Amendment preventing Congress from raising its own pay without an intervening election, was proposed in 1789. Yet, it was not until 1992 that Michigan became the 34th state to ratify the amendment and make it law.

Thus, the legal basis for calling a convention is ready to be sprung.

Congress is in violation of the Constitution because our most revered document says "shall" hold a citizen convention - not may, or perhaps, or if Congress feels like it. Until Gingrich's ascendancy, the House defended its unrestrained spending power tenaciously. The Senate guards incumbency with fervor. This symbiosis has paid off for professional pols and will not be given up easily.

Opponents of a constitutional convention allege that ordinary citizens might tear up the Constitution and write a totally new one. Or, that it would "stampede" and adopt dozens of special-interest amendments.

This is highly unlikely. However, if citizens of two-thirds of the states put it to test, and three-fourths approve, so be it.

The truth is that liberals and entrenched politicians of both parties fear diminution of their two most powerful prerogatives - spending and incumbency. Writers of the U.S. Constitution knew full well the abuses a political bureaucracy can inflict on the citizenry. That is why they built in a safeguard.

Washington, D.C., government has reached such a stage. Without election this Fall of additional representatives and senators who will support balanced budgets and term limits, the recourse for good government might be a legal suit against Congress. Some savvy public interest group will take up the convention cudgel when the tax load becomes unbearable, or passage of a strongly desired law is thwarted. The time is near when we may have to avail ourselves of the remedy wisely provided by the Founding Fathers.

PARTING SHOTS

• The trouble with Washington, D.C., is that it's too small for a state, and too large for an asylum.
  
• Ain't nobody in this here hen house 'cept us chickens!
  
• The "young detailee" borrowed by the Clinton White House from the Army Department - to search 404 confidential FBI files on Republicans - turns out to be a civilian named Tony Marseca. He is a 50-year-old, bald, dirty-tricks operator from the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign. "Just an honest, bureaucratic snafu," declares the president with a soldiers' description of his administration - the aptness of which he understandably does not realize.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers