Thread: Gov. Ron DeSantis touts Constitutional Convention to write Balanced Budget Amendment

.

See: Governors press for a Balanced Budget Amendment

DeSantis told reporters during the joint Idaho press conference:

“I am convinced that you are not going to have Congress all of a sudden change its behavior for the long term. I think the reason we’ve gotten into this with respect to fiscal is because there are certain incentives for the people that are in Washington to behave the way they do. And we need to change those incentives.”

He continued:

“If Idaho and Montana join the fight, that gets us to 29 there’s a couple other states that are on the precipice as well. You need 34 states to trigger Article Five, where you would actually write an amendment and then eventually send it to the states for ratification."

I wonder why Governor DeSantis is so interested in triggering Article V, calling for a constitutional convention with the dangers involved, to write a balanced budget amendment, when our Founders provided a specific procedure to deal with any deficits created by Congress's borrowing during the course of a fiscal year. That procedure is found in the Fair Share Balanced Budget Amendment

Perhaps Ron DeSantis ought to defend our Founder's remedy, which would create a very real moment of accountability for each State's Congressional Delegation if they should borrow during the course of a fiscal year, which would then require them to bring home a bill to their own State Legislature to pay an apportioned share out of their own State Treasury to extinguish the deficit caused by Congress borrowing.

Keep in mind that every single balanced budget amendment produced since the 1980s, to the best of my knowledge and excluding the Fair Share Balanced Budget Amendment, would actually make it constitutional for Congress to not balance the budget on an annual basis. Our Founder's remedy, already in our Constitution, would actually do what Ron DeSantis indicates his goal is. So, why has he not mentioned our Founder's procedure to deal with a deficit caused by Congress's borrowing?

.

JWK

Chief Justice, Warren Burger, stated in 1988, “I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey. After a Convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the Convention if we don’t like the agenda. The meeting in 1787 ignored the limit placed by the Confederation Congress ‘for the sole and express purpose.’ “

.
From James Madison to George Lee Turberville, 2 November 1788

”… an election into it would be courted by the most violent partizans on both sides; it wd. probably consist of the most heterogeneous characters; would be the very focus of that flame which has already too much heated men of all parties; would no doubt contain individuals of insidious views, who under the mask of seeking alterations popular in some parts but inadmissible in other parts of the Union might have a dangerous opportunity of sapping the very foundations of the fabric.”

Is it not obvious that both DeSantis and Trump ought to promote our Founder's big beautiful original tax plan, which provides a procedure to deal with deficits if Congress borrows to meet its expenses?

That procedure creates a very real moment of accountability for each State's Congressional Delegation when they borrow to meet federal expenses during the course of a fiscal year, by requiring them to return home with a bill in hand for their own State's Legislature to pay an apportioned share, out of their own State Treasury, to extinguish the deficit they helped to create while in Washington.


Have we not learned that Congress is unwilling to control its reckless spending and borrowing, and has brought us to a financial situation in which our national debt, including unfunded debt liabilities, is now in excess of $136 TRILLION, with annual interest payments of about $ 1 TRILLION?

Surely neither Trump nor DeSantis is ok with Congress robbing our children and grandchildren of their economic freedom with a debt Congress has created, and both must see the need for adopting a no-nonsense Balanced Budget Amendment.



JWK

We are here today and gone tomorrow, but what is most important is what we do in-between and is what our children will inherit and remember us by.
.
.

.
What the Fair Share Balanced Budget Amendment does is, create a very real moment of accountability for each State’s Congressional Delegation when Congress borrows to meet expenses during the course of a fiscal year. And it does this by making them return home with a bill in hand which makes their State’s Legislature responsible for paying an apportioned share to extinguish the debt created by Congress’s borrowing, just as our Founders intended!

The FSBBA stops Congress from adding to the national debt year after year, after year.

The FSBBA does not limit the amount of revenue Congress may raise.

The FSBBA does not limit Congress’s current spending.

The FSBBA allows each State to raise its apportioned share to extinguish a debt created by Congress’s borrowing, in its own chosen way.

The FSBBA does not forbid any State to have an “income tax”.


So what, if any, is Ron DeSantis' objection to supporting the Fair Share Balanced Budget Amendment?

JWK

“We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves.”— Thomas Jefferson

Having a Constitutional Convention is NOT a good idea nowadays.

Still, many of the issues we face are circumventing our Constitution like algorithmic capture censorship and "FreeSpeechNoReach" code.

The AI Veo3 and Flow Google Applications also circumvent our Constitution with their fake video and narrations blurring real news into fake news and so on.

Some of these issues will intensify and in some cases, it will become challenging to discern reality as more of these AI tools are used.

Veo3 and Flow were just rolled out recently via Google's latest Release Announcements.

Originally Posted by GaiaGoddess

Having a Constitutional Convention is NOT a good idea nowadays.

Still, many of the issues we face are circumventing our Constitution like algorithmic capture censorship and "FreeSpeechNoReach" code.

The AI Veo3 and Flow Google Applications also circumvent our Constitution with their fake video and narrations blurring real news into fake news and so on.

Some of these issues will intensify and in some cases, it will become challenging to discern reality as more of these AI tools are used.

Veo3 and Flow were just rolled out recently via Google's latest Release Announcements.

I agree with you that having a constitutional convention is not a good idea, especially not now with political partisanship at the boiling point.

Additionally, artificial intelligence may very well, and probably will, lead to devastating consequences which science fiction writers have already written about.

Originally Posted by johnwk

I agree with you that having a constitutional convention is not a good idea, especially not now with political partisanship at the boiling point. Additionally, artificial intelligence may very well, and probably will, lead to devastating consequences which science fiction writers have already written about.

We have news that AI code writing is now at the point where you can give a prompt in plain English for what you'd like to create, and the AI will write the code for you! This is astounding ... first, that such a thing could be done; second, that trust would be given that the code is okay; and third, how many engineers will lose not only their jobs, but their careers!

There is also news that Facebook icon, Mark Zuckerberg, is launching a NEW AI initiative to join the AI race for AGI or ASI (Artificial General Intelligence, Artificial Super Intelligence). There are so many companies competing for these "goals" like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, X, Amazon, and so on. NONE of this bodes well for our Constitution as most of what they'll create will circumvent it!

We have a lot to think about.

Thanks for your posts on the subject, johnwk!!

Originally Posted by GaiaGoddess

We have news that AI code writing is now at the point where you can give a prompt in plain English for what you'd like to create, and the AI will write the code for you! This is astounding ... first, that such a thing could be done; second, that trust would be given that the code is okay; and third, how many engineers will lose not only their jobs, but their careers!

There is also news that Facebook icon, Mark Zuckerberg, is launching a NEW AI initiative to join the AI race for AGI or ASI (Artificial General Intelligence, Artificial Super Intelligence). There are so many companies competing for these "goals" like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, X, Amazon, and so on. NONE of this bodes well for our Constitution as most of what they'll create will circumvent it!

We have a lot to think about.

Thanks for your posts on the subject, johnwk!!

More to the point is, we have a lot to be really worried about!