International Business Times
The Koch Brothers Want To Rewrite The Constitution. They May Succeed.
Josh Keefe
An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
Advocates for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution have pinned their hopes on state legislatures calling for a new constitutional convention to get the amendment included.
The Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, a Virginia-based group, has been pushing for states to use Article V of the Constitution, which allows Congress to call for a convention if petitioned by two-thirds of the states, or 34 states.Currently, 17 states have submitted petitions calling for a convention in order to add a balanced budget amendment.
"Our founders really, truly believed -- and if you read Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers the intent was clear -- that if the central government went beyond its bounds, the states have the way to close the divide peacefully," David Biddulph, the co-founder of the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, told The Huffington Post.
An Article V convention has never been called, even though 49 states have submitted at least one petition calling for such a convention. Currently, at least three states are considering petitions: Georgia for the balanced budget amendment, Indiana to balance the power between the states and the federal government, and Kansas to move certain powers solely to the states.The Huffington Post