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America has problems. Our national debt is ballooning, trust in the courts and Congress has been decreasing for years, the federal government forces obligations on the states without providing money to the states to pay for them, and Americans feel powerless to change anything. Americans don't trust their political leaders anymore. The good news: the vast majority of Americans agree about these problems and want the Constitution amended to fix them. The bad news: Congress will never do it. Most members of Congress are not bad people. They try to take into account the greater good. But the way the system is set up right now creates powerful incentives for them to individually act in ways that are harmful to our country. For example, members of Congress have the power to spend lots of money, so they use it in ways that they think will make their constituents vote for them, even if it plunges our country into tremendous debt. Compounding the problem is that the longer they stay in Congress, the more they are captured by the system and lose touch with what matters. It is difficult for we, the people, to effect change at the ballot box. Once in office, incumbents have significant advantages that make them difficult to defeat in elections, and few members of Congress are willing to impose term limits on themselves. Why would they want to put themselves out of a job? When our founding fathers established our form of government, they set up a system of checks and balances and division of powers. Each branch of government has different powers, and each branch acts as a check to restrain any other branch of government from usurping power to itself. But what do you do when when the system breaks down? The answer is that the framers included in the Constitution a process for amending it, so that when problems in our system of government come up, they can be fixed. Twenty-seven times in our history, our representatives in Congress have come together to propose amendments to the Constitution, which were then ratified by the states. We can thank the amendment process for preserving most of the freedoms we enjoy today in the Bill of Rights, and for amendments that ended slavery and prohibited racial discrimination. But what do we do when Congress becomes corrupt, when it refuses to act even in the face of broad national consensus?  Fortunately, the drafters of the Constitution foresaw that just such a situation could happen. In the debates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, delegates were concerned that a corrupt or recalcitrant Congress may someday refuse to propose needed constitutional amendments that were in the nation's best interests. In addition to giving Congress the power to propose amendments, the framers included in Article V of the Constitution a second method for amending the Constitution. This second method is a constitutional convention requested by the states to propose amendments, or an “Article V convention.” An Article V convention must be called, “on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States.” Once an Article V convention has proposed amendments, those amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the states for them to become part of the Constitution.
The Article V convention process has never been used to amend the Constitution, but the number of states applying for a convention has nearly reached the required threshold several times. At least four amendments—the Seventeenth (direct election of Senators), Twenty-First (repealing prohibition), Twenty-Second (presidential term limits), and Twenty-Fifth Amendments (presidential succession) were proposed by Congress in response to the growing numbers of requests from states for an Article V convention. Sometimes Congress has refused to act, even when confronted with enormous support from the states for an amendment. For example, in the late 1970s and early 1980s the country was facing severe economic problems and mounting federal budget deficits, much like today. In this climate, support for a balanced budget amendment reached a crescendo in 1983, when the number of states requesting a constitutional convention to propose a balanced budget amendment reached 32, just two states short of the required 34. Support for the balanced budget subsided when Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which required that the budget be balanced by 1991. Unfortunately, that act was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1986, and the country has never achieved sustained balanced budgets. Twenty-three states have never rescinded their applications for a convention to propose a balanced budget amendment, and their applications remain active until now. That means we are only 11 more states away from forcing Congress to call a constitutional convention to propose a balanced budget amendment. Throughout the years, naysayers who do not understand the Article V convention process have raised unfounded concerns. It is true that some unanswered questions remain about how a convention would function in practice, because no Article V Convention has ever been convened. The text of Article V of the Constitution, and its drafting history, provide obvious answers to most concerns about the process. One major question is whether the scope of the convention's subject matter could be limited. The consensus is that Congress does not have the power to limit a convention, but that the states do. Congress's duty to call a convention when requested by the states means that it must call the convention that the states have requested. If the states, therefore, request a convention limited to a certain subject matter, then the convention that is called must be what the states requested. Another baseless concern which has been raised is whether an Article V convention could become a "runaway convention" that attempts to exceed its scope. These fears are groundless because an Article V convention only has power to propose amendments. Proposed amendments are not part of the constitution until they are ratified by three-fourths of the states. If a convention did try to exceed its scope and radically alter the Constitution, none of those amendments would have a prayer of being ratified by three-fourths of the states. Fears that an Article V convention may exceed its scope are also unfounded in light of the United States' experience with state constitutional conventions. Hundreds of state constitutional conventions have been held to amend state constitutions, with little evidence that any of them have exceeded their scope. The United States has a long and proud tradition of respecting the rule of law and constitutional government. No convention would be able to uproot that. The founding fathers wisely foresaw that Article V conventions would be the best way to stand against a corrupt or recalcitrant government, and that is why they included it in the Constitution. They did not believe that Article V conventions would be problematic, and we at FixitTogether.org trust their judgement. For many years, large majorities of Americans have supported certain simple basic changes to our government, such as imposing congressional term limits and requiring that the government maintain a balanced budget. Our purpose is to educate the public about the constitutional convention process and pressure our state legislators to request a constitutional convention to adopt needed amendments that Congress has refused to consider. We support the following package of four constitutional amendments, all of which enjoy widespread support among Americans: 1. A balanced budget amendment (supported by 76% of Americans)
2. A term limits amendment (supported by 71% of Americans)
3. An amendment to fix our federal court system (supported by 74% of Americans)
4. An amendment to prohibit unfunded mandates (supported by 69% of Americans)
States have already made requests for an Article V convention on many of these topics. We only need 11 more state applications, for example, to reach the 34 states needed to have a convention to propose a balanced budget amendment. We have made a conscious decision to focus only on issues supported by the vast majority of Americans (more than 70% of Americans support most of our proposals). There is a good reason for this—it is the only way we’ll be able to accomplish anything. The Article V convention process has never been used before, and the only way state legislators will feel comfortable enough to support it is if the amendments they request are uncontroversial. It will take a lot of people pressuring their state legislators to force them to take action. We think that our strategy can make it happen.  The problems we are trying to fix are not partisan problems—Congress has failed to act both when it was controlled by Republicans and Democrats. We believe that, no matter our individual political differences, we can unite as Americans to force the government to adopt basic changes that almost everyone supports. We are strictly non-partisan, and invite the participation of everyone. We support uncontroversial changes that most people—left or right—support. We are politically neutral and are not affiliated with any other group or political party. Our group is called FixitTogether.org because we believe that only acting together as Americans, regardless of political ideology, we can fix our country.
By this point, you
may be asking yourself how you can get involved. If you would like to
learn more about us, the Article V convention process, and our
proposed amendments, please take a moment to read our About
Us and FAQ
pages and to read more about our four proposed amendments. We are contacting all the state legislators
in the country, asking them to publicly take a pledge to support a
constitutional convention to adopt our four amendments. Check our
Status
Update page to see whether your state legislators have taken the
pledge and to learn whether your state has made requests for any of
our four proposed amendments. Most importantly, please go to our Get Involved section to become a part of FixitTogether.org. There,
you can learn how to contact
your state legislators to urge them to take our pledge and learn
how you can educate your friends and neighbors about these vital issues.
Photo courtesy of stevenanichols
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