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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (408002)	2/1/2011 7:37:35 AM
From: Bridge Player	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793998

There are essentially two ways spelled out in the Constitution for how to propose an amendment. One has never been used. I found this interesting: ========================================================================== There have been two nearly-successful attempts to amend the Constitution via an Article V convention since the late 1960s. The first try was an attempt to propose an amendment that would overturn two controversial Supreme Court decisions, Wesberry v. Sanders and Reynolds v. Sims, dealing with voting districts and apportionment of votes in state elections. The attempt fell only one state short of reaching the 34 needed to force Congress to call a convention in 1969, but ended by the death of its main promoter Senator Everett Dirksen. After this peak, several states rescinded their applications, and interest in the proposed amendment subsided.[12] The next nearly-successful attempt to call a convention was in the late 1970s and 1980s, in response to the ballooning federal deficit. States began applying to Congress for an Article V convention to propose a balanced budget amendment. By 1983, the number of applications had reached 32, only two states short of the 34 needed to force such a convention.[13] Enthusiasm for the amendment subsided in response to fears that an Article V convention could not be limited to a single subject and because Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which required that the budget be balanced by 1991 (but that Act was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1986).[13] ================================================================================== en.wikipedia.org Maybe it is time for the states to again call for a constitutional convention to consider a balanced budget amendment. Arguably, our situation is far more dire today than in the 1980s.