During a shuffle through old notes, out popped a reminder that the legislature in early May had tied itself in a short knot over an old bugaboo – whether Kansas should join roughly a dozen states calling for a national convention of state governments to challenge federal authority, amend the Constitution, and to limit congressional terms in office.
This has become custom in Topeka. Impassioned conservatives strive to strip Washington of power. Moderates caution that a national convention could invite unimagined trouble.
On May 5, Senate Republicans, who outnumber Democrats 29-11, argued for four hours over the number of votes – 2/3 or simple majority? – required to send such a resolution to the House for its approval. But the clock was running and the Senate had urgent business at hand (school finance and the state budget, for openers). The idea was returned to a committee for more study.
Three years ago a proposal to place Kansas among petitioners for a national constitutional convention was turned away in the Senate, 22-16, five votes short of the required two-thirds needed to advance any constitutional tinkering.
At the time, 12 states had petitioned Congress for a “convention of states” to propose amendments for budget restraints on the federal government, to limit the government’s power and jurisdiction, and order term limits for members of Congress. (Thirty-four states must sign on before Congress would be required to set a time and place for the convention.)
This crusade will run on in fits and starts, perhaps even into the coming election season. It carries timeworn complaints about federal overreach, abuse of power, runaway spending, unfunded mandates and reckless oversight, the trampling of states’ rights. The complaints, mostly aimless, are good for stirring up crowds at a fair or a Trump rally. They lose force against the backdrop of such federal intrusions as disaster aid following tragedy and FEMA trailers after a storm. They wilt with the flash of a Medicare card at the clinic or the lunch and breakfast lines at school. They stutter at the federal intrusion of another crop subsidy or community development grant.
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Conventions have long been urged as one way to limit power and federal spending, but changing the constitution won’t do that. An amendment to limit revenues to the states – which is what it usually is – would mean nothing more than temporary chaos in public services and subsequent scrambling for ways to get around the rule.
If we’re really fired up about changing the constitution to limit spending or power, we don’t need the expense and hysteria of a convention. Congress already has the means to limit spending and the power to step away from mandates directing local participation in state-federal ventures such as road and bridge construction, school meals, health care, special education, urban renewal, rural development, and so forth.
A principle objection to the constitutional convention is that it opens the gate to a flood of amendments from interest groups and cause lobbies. Guns and abortion, land management, immigration, foreign aid and roughly a hundred other topics would scream for inclusion and debate. Whether they would succeed is less disturbing than how they would mess up any proceedings, harden divisions and cause new rifts within and among the states.
We don’t need that. The states’ call for a convention is little more than an admission that they, and Washington, have missed their obligation to get the job done. The call is careless and impious: states that depend most heavily on federal spending, aid and earmarks, turn about with lectures on power and overreach and flagrant spending. Federal largesse is often crucial to many communities, especially in Kansas.
And that other popular cry, for term limits, carries its own trouble. It may take a whack at tenured politicians, but it says nothing about the limitless terms of bureaucrats at the gears and levers of government, or the lobbyists who prowl its corridors of power. It may be that some members of Congress have been too long at the trough. But to limit the terms in one avenue of power and not the others is to invite real trouble.
The goal, a general overhaul, can be reached by more orderly proceedings through the state and federal legislatures. The threat of tampering with our basic law is a real one. So is the risk to important matters at home, such as spending for things other than the heated air of a convention.
The solution can be found where it’s always been. The ballot box, if we are all allowed to use it.
