A Threat to the Constitution

It didn't receive a lot of hype this week, but the Wisconsin Legislature has approved the most-dangerous bill ever.  I'm not talking about the measure that would allow a child of any age to carry a gun while hunting with an adult.  Instead I refer to the call for a Constitutional Convention. 

Wisconsin became the 28th state to approve a resolution calling for the convention--meaning just six more states need to join in and delegates will be assigned to come to Washington DC.  Article V of the Constitution allows for this process--as the Founding Fathers wanted to make sure that states could continue to be the driving force behind Constitutional amendments--and not just Congress. 

A group called the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force is the one pushing this effort--saying that the country is going bankrupt due to deficit spending in Washington.  They want the 28th Amendment to require the Federal Government to pass a balanced budget every year--and then be required to stick to it.

That may sound great on the surface, but the amendment idea is fraught with risk.  For starters, it severely hampers the Federal Government's ability to deal with unforeseen events--like natural disasters and wars.  If approved, it would likely put an immediate end to the Global War on Terror--as that expense is currently being put on the credit card.  For those not familiar with our Federal budget, we borrow an average of 600-billion dollars a year to fund the Government.  About 600-billion dollars is what we spend on defense. 

If you want to continue to fund military operations, then you are going to have to drastically cut Social Security and Medicare.  Those programs run an annual deficit of about 400-billion dollars--and that doesn't include Disability, Food Assistance or Unemployment insurance.  If you want to do across the board cuts, every department of the Federal Government--except debt repayment, which is 229-billion--would have to take about an 18-percent cut in funding.

But the biggest danger in a Constitutional Convention is that delegates will not be limited to just a balanced budget amendment.  Even State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald admitted after this week's vote he wasn't sure if the Convention could go in and make changes to existing amendments.  What would stop the delegates from repealing the Second Amendment?  Remember, we all want to "do something about gun violence".  They could also change the First Amendment to limit free speech to as not to "offend" or to "make someone feel bad".  And what is to stop them from making "free healthcare" or "free college education" from becoming Constitutional rights?
There is a reason the drafters of the Constitution made is so difficult to amend--so it would not be changed constantly on a whim or to fit trends in society.  Look at how successful that was during Prohibition.  Calling a Constitutional Convention on the auspices of limiting government spending is opening a Pandora's Box that the country could end up regretting for the next 225 years.