Here we are about 8 months into the Trump administration. And I am shocked that the Senate and the House, both under Republican majorities, continue to be more of a block to implementing the populist policies we elected Trump to achieve than the Democrats.
I keep waiting and hoping that the GOP leadership will do the right thing and start working with Trump to implement the agenda Trump was elected to do. But no, Congress failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare). Congress is dithering and apparently doing nothing on tax reform. Ann Coulter continues to tweet almost daily that zero miles of the wall were built yesterday and zero miles of the wall were built today. The intelligence agencies continue to run their own agendas and continue to be the source of leaks besmirching POTUS. The President continues to advance slowly on appointing judges. The DOJ continues to fail to address any of the illegal activities of some members of the prior administration. The State Department continues to refuse to comply with FOIA requests for data on current and prior administration activities. And the list could go on and on.
I am concluding that the only way that any "swamp draining" is going to happen is if the States call a Constitutional Convention. Per Article 5 of the US Constitution, two-thirds of our fifty states, thirty-four, must call for a National Convention (aka Constitutional Convention or Amendments Convention).
According to Wikipedia "In recent years some have argued that state governments should call for such a convention. They include Michael Farris, Lawrence Lessig, Sanford Levinson, Larry Sabato, Jonathan Turley, and Mark Levin. In 2015, Citizens for Self-Governance launched a nationwide effort to call an Article V Convention, through a project called Convention of the States, in a bid to rein in the federal government. As of 2017, CSG's resolution has passed in 12 states." (See the quoted Wikipedia article here.)
Wikipedia has an article on Citizens for Self-Governance here. Their website can be found here. Might be worth a read to see if you support their objectives.
I call for President Trump to begin a national campaign to invoke the Article 5 Convention. At the time of this writing third-eight of the US States are considered "Republican". The time is ripe for marshaling those states and convening the Convention. If 12 have already called for the Convention, only 26 more are needed.
Some of the topics that I would like to see addressed (amendments approved) at the convention include:
- Term limits of US Representatives and US Senators (12 years?)
- Term limits for all Federal judges (10 years?)
- Balanced budget amendment
- Immigration reform / Elimination of "sanctuary" status
- Fixing the 14th amendment to eliminate anchor babies
- Voting rights reform: ID requirements, citizenship
- Fixing the 2nd Amendment to eliminate ambiguity
- Prohibiting unions for all government employees
There is down-side risk to calling a convention. Things could go wrong. Some states might propose amendments that I don't care for. But with all 50 states present at the Convention I believe that any extreme amendments would be unlikely to pass and that the majority would make rational and reasonably limited and well worded amendments. Also, I'm willing to admit that I'm not the best or final arbiter of what a Convention of States will decide for our future.
