A “Con-Con” would be a con game
By Bob Confer
Going back to the start of the Tea Party movement in 2007, something that has been in and out of the public conversation has been the promotion, by some folks of right persuasion (specifically Republicans and neoconservatives), a constitutional convention (“Con-Con”) in hopes of passing a balanced budget amendment (BBA).
The concept of a Con-Con getting attention again, as a growing number of Republican governors are clamoring for one in hopes of landing the BBA. In just the past five weeks, Ron DeSantis (Florida), Brad Little (Idaho), and Greg Gianforte (Montana) have held press conferences about this.
While these efforts might seem well-meaning, they are extremely dangerous. Ignore the fact that a BBA in itself is counterintuitive and counterproductive to its intent — to balance a budget, the government needs only to increase revenues (taxes) to meet expenses (spending). The real danger in a Con-Con is that it would open Pandora’s Box.
Article V of the US Constitution allows for a constitutional convention by which new amendments to our federal government’s primary legal document can be proposed. 34 state legislatures would have to submit applications for a Con-Con. Once said convention has proposed an amendment, it would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states in order to become part of the Constitution.
Under such circumstances — in today’s world especially — it would be a free-for-all and any amendment under the sun could be proposed. That’s why, until only recently, you’ve rarely heard anyone on the left denouncing the right’s calls for a Con-Con (as they do for anything the right brings up – and vice versa). They’ve known that they, too, would have the ability to propose amendments that meet their desires, whether it’s recognition of abortion as a right, an increase in federal powers, or permanence of social welfare programs. This year has been the first time that I can remember those on the left being worried about a Con-Con (you certainly can’t blame them when a sitting President has said he’s striving for an extra term). A Con-Con was interesting to them, until it wasn’t.
For countless reasons, the Constitution is a document better left alone. Adding to it can be dangerous. Sure, some amendments introduced after the Bill of Rights have some merit, like XV which clarified that no one may have their rights abridged on the basis of race or color. But, others have been ruinous to the United States, including XVI (which gave the feds the ability to collect income taxes) and XVII (which transferred the election of senators from the states to the people). The outcome of a Con-Con might make XVI and XVII look docile by comparison; the legal basis of our federal government could be forever transformed, even dismantled and replaced with something new.
Were new amendments – whether they were new controls or new powers – to be installed, who’s to say the law would be followed? The Constitution in its past and current forms clearly defines the expectations and parameters of the federal government. We have allowed our federal government to grow well beyond those lines, to the point that it has almost become a national government, one that has assumed countless powers that truly belong to the states and the people. It’s long been said that were the federal government to actually operate within its constitutional limitations, it would be one-tenth its current size.
It seems like we are getting closer to a Con-Con. In recent years, most states have seen bills and resolutions calling for a constitutional convention introduced among their legislatures on an annual basis. The fact that so many legislators and legislatures across the country have seriously considered them is frightening. As our federal government continues to confound people on both sides of the aisle and calls for a convention become common on social media, in newspapers, and around water coolers, a Con-Con within the next twenty years is certainly foreseeable, especially given its novelty and a hunger for change (the definition of which varies with power, politics, and people).
If you value what our United States were intended to be and what they should be (by their very definition in the Constitution as she stands now) then you shouldn’t be among those calling for a constitutional convention and you should be educating the people who are. A Con-Con would be a con game, letting the wolves run the hen house.
