Our democratic republic is in grave peril. The national debt, well more than $37 trillion, is now growing by one trillion in debt every five months, according the Peterson Foundation.  A 2023 Pew Research Center poll, shows that 87 percent of U.S. adults favor term limits. And as many as 62 percent supports limits on presidential power, according to a September Reuters-Ipsos Poll. To compound matters further, the federal government is now in its 22nd shutdown since 1976.

It is past time for us to admit what many of us suspect: Washington is broken.

Democracy 21’s Fred Wertheimer, whom NPR praised as “one of the progressive movement’s leading strategists on ethics and campaign finance laws since the 1980s,” took the time out of his political advocacy work to attack the convention of states process, calling it a constitutional crisis.

It is ironic anytime one legislative reformist criticizes others for doing the very same thing. When Wertheimer and others assail the convention of states resolution (which 19 states have passed) and the balanced budget requirement (which 28 states have passed), he is defending a status quo under which 75 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.

The convention of states movement is limited to just three policy areas. The first is balancing the federal budget — something 49 of 50 states require their legislatures to do. The second is imposing term limits on members of Congress and other federal officials — something already done for 16 state legislatures and 37 governors. The third is limiting the scope of the federal government, putting more power back into the hands of the states.

Outlandish, scaremongering claims about a runaway convention doing crazy things (nullification, vacating Supreme Court decisions, etc.) also fly in the face of legal reality. How many nanoseconds would it take for convention opponents to file lawsuits and obtain injunctions and restraining orders if a convention of states were to overstep its grant of authority in all of those state resolutions?

There are many naysayers on both wings of the political spectrum who cry out that a convention of states has never been done. But they are not paying much attention to their history books, Believe it or not, similar past initiatives have improved our government through constitutional amendments.

For example, the U.S. House passed the 17th Amendment to the Constitution — the popular election of Senators — many times, only to have the Senate refuse even to consider the legislation. But when 31 state legislatures approved a convention of states resolution — just one shy of the number needed at that time to trigger the convention — the Senate suddenly did an about-face and passed it in 1912. The amendment was ratified one year later.

Also, according to the Congressional Research Service, 21 states granted women full or partial voting rights between 1869 and 1917. These states helped propel Congress to adopt the 19th amendment, guaranteeing woman’s suffrage in all states, in 1919.

So a state-initiated process to offer amendments exists, and history testifies to its successes. All it takes is political will at the state level to accomplish it. The “it’s never been done” claim is a phony premise.

We should not fear a convention. In his 2004 landmark book “Alexander Hamilton,” author Ron Chernow pointed out how George Washington doubted that the new federal government under the Constitution would last 20 years. In Federalist No. 85, Hamilton argued that the built-in methods of amending the Constitution would help advance a democratic republic and assure people of their individual liberties and property rights.

Whenever various state legislatures hold committee hearings about a convention of states, groups on the far left (such as Common Cause) as well as the far right (such as the John Birch Society) both come out to testify against it. That’s very telling. As the late religious leader Boyd K. Packer once said, “The flak is always heaviest close to the target.”

I am not an employee of the Convention of States or any other lobbying and political advocacy group. Like a great majority of Americans, I am simply fed up with Washington being increasingly tone-deaf about reforms that the people overwhelmingly want and support.

Congress and the president will not heal themselves. The only option left to tackle the above-mentioned governance failures is an Article Five convention. If not, we descend further into chaos and crisis.

John Kerezy is associate professor of media and journalism studies at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.

, 2025-10-09 13:00:00, , TheHill.com Just In, %%https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/cropped-favicon-512px-1.png?w=32, https://thehill.com/homenews/feed/, John Kerezy, opinion contributor